Virtually Abandoned Places
August 20, 2015 3:00 PM Subscribe
Touring abandoned college campuses, Second-Life style. What happened to the virtual-world dreams of a decade ago? Patrick Hogan of Fusion investigates, and finds a pirate ship, Test Questios [sic], and defunct certification programs. Get comfy. [via ArsTechnica]
It's at fusion.net, but I found the link via ArsTechnica in the first place.
posted by wanderingmind at 3:10 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by wanderingmind at 3:10 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
A decade ago? Active Worlds just celebrated its 20th anniversary in June, and Worlds is even older. Both still exist and are freely explorable today. How they manage to exist with such a dwindled userbase and no obvious income streams, I have no idea -- but the virtual civilization they've left behind is fascinating.
posted by Rhaomi at 3:13 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by Rhaomi at 3:13 PM on August 20, 2015
I know someone who went to NOVA (Northern Virginia Community College) in the right timeframe, and I know he did have some classes involving Second Life... I'll have to pass this link on to him.
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:14 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by LobsterMitten at 3:14 PM on August 20, 2015
Now repeated many thousandfold in minecraft servers all over...
posted by Zalzidrax at 3:33 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Zalzidrax at 3:33 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
The most interesting thing about this article are the very angry comments at the bottom, presumably by those who were/are personally invested in the use of Second Life in education and who don't acknowledge that this fad's 15 minutes are up.
posted by crazy with stars at 3:33 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by crazy with stars at 3:33 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
As we type this, Deloitte Consulting has several dozen consultants-in-flight-in-air-actually-between-cities-the-poor-folks who were suckered into the deal via second life. So it goes, Vonnegut would say.
posted by mrdaneri at 3:36 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by mrdaneri at 3:36 PM on August 20, 2015
"The most interesting thing about this article are the very angry comments at the bottom, presumably by those who were/are personally invested in the use of Second Life in education and who don't acknowledge that this fad's 15 minutes are up."
I'm not sure if something being active for over 10 years with a constant user base can be considered a "15 minute fad". Second Life was never overly popular but the people who kept using it really kept using it. And they still do. I tried using it but I didn't like the UI and the vasts amounts of empty space where nothing is happening. This was probably around 2010 if not earlier so it always had an abandoned feel for me. I think that it may experience a resurgence with the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard though.
posted by I-baLL at 3:46 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure if something being active for over 10 years with a constant user base can be considered a "15 minute fad". Second Life was never overly popular but the people who kept using it really kept using it. And they still do. I tried using it but I didn't like the UI and the vasts amounts of empty space where nothing is happening. This was probably around 2010 if not earlier so it always had an abandoned feel for me. I think that it may experience a resurgence with the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard though.
posted by I-baLL at 3:46 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
The worlds I miss are the text-based ones in the MOOs - in particular, PMC-MOO, where you could build quite exotic machinery and spaces. I spent a lot of time in the late 80s and early 90s in those places... Second Life always seemed so much more clunky and hard to grok.
posted by Devonian at 3:56 PM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by Devonian at 3:56 PM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]
SL has a small but dogged fanbase. One of the things that many users have in common is disability; SL gives them a chance to interact socially in a virtual space (and run nightclubs or fashion boutiques or talk shows or S&M groups or whatever) using a persona that is whatever they design. They are constantly griping about the Linden Labs various issues, but they also haven't liked any other virtual setups well enough to abandon this one.
Lots of musicians, there, too; you can play virtual concerts with a fairly minimal setup. The spouse plays live-via-streaming/animation to people in Europe and Asia on a frequent basis (he has discovered that a goofy Lovecraft album he did with a friend is a big seller in Brazil; he thinks it was found thanks to an SL person checking his profile). You can even set it up for two or more people to all broadcast/play/stream at the same time, from different locations. And they can only kind of hear each other. It's kind of amazing to watch in practice.
Some people do machinima stuff that's pretty interesting, too.
You have to get past the crude graphics to enjoy it, but for most people, it serves as a community and the stiff jerky animation is not as important as the communication going on.
posted by emjaybee at 3:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
Lots of musicians, there, too; you can play virtual concerts with a fairly minimal setup. The spouse plays live-via-streaming/animation to people in Europe and Asia on a frequent basis (he has discovered that a goofy Lovecraft album he did with a friend is a big seller in Brazil; he thinks it was found thanks to an SL person checking his profile). You can even set it up for two or more people to all broadcast/play/stream at the same time, from different locations. And they can only kind of hear each other. It's kind of amazing to watch in practice.
Some people do machinima stuff that's pretty interesting, too.
You have to get past the crude graphics to enjoy it, but for most people, it serves as a community and the stiff jerky animation is not as important as the communication going on.
posted by emjaybee at 3:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
The worlds I miss are the text-based ones in the MOOs - in particular, PMC-MOO, where you could build quite exotic machinery and spaces. I spent a lot of time in the late 80s and early 90s in those places... Second Life always seemed so much more clunky and hard to grok.
This. I was always a verbal learner, and loved writing—when I stumbled onto MOOs and MUSHes in the mid 90s, it was mind-blowing. I was fortunate in that the first people I crossed paths with were random researchers doing theses on computer-mediated communication and stuff like that. LambdaMOO, SnowMOO, and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the SenseMedia network were my first really tight-knit post-BBS, post-Usenet online communities. I met navy researchers, university sysadmins, met my first serious long-distance-then-IRL girlfriend, started experimenting with weird internet protocols, and eventually (via a random person from the Howard Dean campaign, was set on the course of my current career.
When Second Life and similar virtual worlds started making their splashes, I realized that a big part of the magic had been the reliance on clear and evocative language rather than 3D models. The idea of creating spaces out of persistent words, of carving out vistas and streetcorners and spaceships and meadows with nothing but a few commands and a string of good sentences? That had a huge impact on me. Later MMoRPGs and 3D social spaces never grabbed me the same way, though I totally understand their appeal.
posted by verb at 4:08 PM on August 20, 2015 [9 favorites]
This. I was always a verbal learner, and loved writing—when I stumbled onto MOOs and MUSHes in the mid 90s, it was mind-blowing. I was fortunate in that the first people I crossed paths with were random researchers doing theses on computer-mediated communication and stuff like that. LambdaMOO, SnowMOO, and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the SenseMedia network were my first really tight-knit post-BBS, post-Usenet online communities. I met navy researchers, university sysadmins, met my first serious long-distance-then-IRL girlfriend, started experimenting with weird internet protocols, and eventually (via a random person from the Howard Dean campaign, was set on the course of my current career.
When Second Life and similar virtual worlds started making their splashes, I realized that a big part of the magic had been the reliance on clear and evocative language rather than 3D models. The idea of creating spaces out of persistent words, of carving out vistas and streetcorners and spaceships and meadows with nothing but a few commands and a string of good sentences? That had a huge impact on me. Later MMoRPGs and 3D social spaces never grabbed me the same way, though I totally understand their appeal.
posted by verb at 4:08 PM on August 20, 2015 [9 favorites]
I knew some of the people that were advocates of SL for education back in the ~2006-2007 era. It had some promise as a learning technique for things that were appropriate to mapping to 3D worlds but for general purpose education was a poor idea. It combined the worst of the physical world and electronic world, and mostly (as the screenshots in the article show) added clutter and got in the way of learning rather than enhancing it.
The best non-technical online class that I took alternated between online chats and message board posting, and I thought that worked really well.
posted by Candleman at 4:12 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
The best non-technical online class that I took alternated between online chats and message board posting, and I thought that worked really well.
posted by Candleman at 4:12 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Naive question: what, if anything, replaced Second Life? Minecraft?
posted by standardasparagus at 4:18 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by standardasparagus at 4:18 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
One of my friends was responsible for running the Second Life version of our university. He had to coin a bunch of serious sounding acronyms in order to be able to talk reasonably about it at high level business meetings. Every time I hear these stories, I am so jealous. I would love that anarchronistic bit to be on my resume. (...says the mainframe programmer.)
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:32 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:32 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
One of the interesting Universities still in play is University of Western Australia, which has done a wide variety of art-centered events for years. I don't know many others besides Thothica, which I don't think has a web presence. Unfortunately, M Linden had a business focus and made a bunch of missteps which resulted in a lot of universities closing for budget reasons; Ebbe Linden re-instated the educational discounts, but to a certain extent the damage was done.
In the same vein, Linden Lab's Endowment for the Arts is on it's ninth cycle offering sims for artists to build on and make public statements (most of the sims are let for six months, a few are longer or shorter). I'm particularly fond of Bryn Oh's collaboration with a few other SL artists and a museum in Germany for the project Obedience (I blogged it), about the story of Abraham and Isaac. Right now we're in the first couple of months of development, so only a handful of the Artist in Residence sims have anything in them, but as we near the end of this six month cycle it should be amazing.
In terms of graphics and style, a lot depends on where you go and what you do. I think I tend to look pretty good in world (I blog here), but I'm also an events and fashion blogger and care a lot about appearance. You certainly can still look like someone from 2007, and many people do, but many others don't and mesh had a strong effect on building and dress in world. Hunting around FLickr for Second life pictures gives you a pretty good sense of the variety (One, Two, Three places to start).
As for the next step, Linden Labs just started it's closed alpha of the new Virtual World they're building, Sansar, with the help of a bunch of creators from Second Life. They're planning on running both worlds concurrently.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:37 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
In the same vein, Linden Lab's Endowment for the Arts is on it's ninth cycle offering sims for artists to build on and make public statements (most of the sims are let for six months, a few are longer or shorter). I'm particularly fond of Bryn Oh's collaboration with a few other SL artists and a museum in Germany for the project Obedience (I blogged it), about the story of Abraham and Isaac. Right now we're in the first couple of months of development, so only a handful of the Artist in Residence sims have anything in them, but as we near the end of this six month cycle it should be amazing.
In terms of graphics and style, a lot depends on where you go and what you do. I think I tend to look pretty good in world (I blog here), but I'm also an events and fashion blogger and care a lot about appearance. You certainly can still look like someone from 2007, and many people do, but many others don't and mesh had a strong effect on building and dress in world. Hunting around FLickr for Second life pictures gives you a pretty good sense of the variety (One, Two, Three places to start).
As for the next step, Linden Labs just started it's closed alpha of the new Virtual World they're building, Sansar, with the help of a bunch of creators from Second Life. They're planning on running both worlds concurrently.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:37 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
What replaced Second Life? Smartphones.
posted by oceanjesse at 4:38 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by oceanjesse at 4:38 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
what, if anything, replaced Second Life? Minecraft?
It never really had that big of a solid user base but had a really effective hype machine. The attempts to do eLearning and sales moved pretty rapidly to Web 2.0 - Ajax was a real game changer in making basic interaction through web browsers enjoyable. A lot of the people that did want to tinker with worlds play Minecraft. And a bunch of people that want to socially hang out and have an excuse to do something with their Avatars play MMORPGs.
posted by Candleman at 4:40 PM on August 20, 2015
It never really had that big of a solid user base but had a really effective hype machine. The attempts to do eLearning and sales moved pretty rapidly to Web 2.0 - Ajax was a real game changer in making basic interaction through web browsers enjoyable. A lot of the people that did want to tinker with worlds play Minecraft. And a bunch of people that want to socially hang out and have an excuse to do something with their Avatars play MMORPGs.
posted by Candleman at 4:40 PM on August 20, 2015
Never is there love for Sulake.
okay, okay...Flash based crap is crap, but still.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:42 PM on August 20, 2015
okay, okay...Flash based crap is crap, but still.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:42 PM on August 20, 2015
I'm remembering this FPP where they go through all these bizarre abandoned spaces in Active Worlds. Anyone remember it? It's not this one, unless I missed it in those links.
posted by pravit at 4:53 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by pravit at 4:53 PM on August 20, 2015
Remember, never give H.O.W.A.R.D. your real name in a virtual classroom.
posted by benzenedream at 4:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 4:59 PM on August 20, 2015 [4 favorites]
I remember my boss applying for a grant to do something like this with our program back around to 2007. It was a rushed, terribly grant that I really tried to help her rewrite. Shane Dawson the Internet or virtual worlds, and it showed.She wouldn't take any of my suggestions, and we didn't get the grant.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:59 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:59 PM on August 20, 2015
I'm remembering this FPP where they go through all these bizarre abandoned spaces in Active Worlds. Anyone remember it? It's not this one, unless I missed it in those links.
I think I made the one you're thinking of: this one.
posted by codacorolla at 6:00 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think I made the one you're thinking of: this one.
posted by codacorolla at 6:00 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
Cisco used Second Life to throw a product launch party back in 2006. Isn't that strange?
posted by oceanjesse at 7:16 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by oceanjesse at 7:16 PM on August 20, 2015
I think a lot of people--and this is ongoing, it's still a part of the novel Ready Player One in a way that made me realize that the fantasy hasn't gone away--who think that the school environment, that the classroom environment, despite not being a universal part of the culture except for a very small sliver of recent time, is such a fantastic thing that of course online education is going to find ways to preserve it. But classrooms weren't invented because classrooms are fantastic. They were mostly there, for at least school as modern Americans understand it, to mass-produce instruction. To allow one teacher to instruct many pupils at once. I mean, public school teachers spend tons of their time trying to prevent students from interacting with each other while learning. I look at Skyrim and I start to think, the more beautiful virtual worlds could possibly be, the more I'd rather learn using a platform like Khan Academy so that I'm not distracted by the scenery.
posted by Sequence at 7:50 PM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 7:50 PM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]
That's officially the wrongest thing on the internet today, thanks Sequence. Take a bow!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:52 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:52 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
a good friend mine who's a gainful merchant on second life, turning virtual stuff into serious coin, tells me 2L is rampant with bored 20-something stay at home wives. To me it seems like a fromage-like 3d UI for yahoo clubs circa 1998.
posted by Fupped Duck at 8:02 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Fupped Duck at 8:02 PM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'd be happy to hear why? I'm certainly not saying I don't value exploration and beautiful things, but I wouldn't have wanted to take my calculus class in a virtual world setting. There might be very specific learning experiences which would do great with immersion, but I can't think of any of them that are really helped by having a virtual college campus to take place on. I can't picture a future in which kids get virtual books out of virtual lockers and then go sit at virtual desks like that adds value to the learning process.
posted by Sequence at 8:04 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 8:04 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Codacorolla that's it! Hah, I still remember that tye dye shirt kid avatar even now. I remember being him during the free trial of Worlds.
posted by pravit at 8:32 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by pravit at 8:32 PM on August 20, 2015
I heard about Second Life in 2008 or so, and thought it was stupid and never tried it. Inspired by this article I got around to downloading it and trying it.
First impressions: The graphics are TERRIBLE, the movement/camera control is really primitive, and the thing is constantly freezing up for a second or two at a time. Not cool!
There's some great off-the-wall features like voice morphing -- I wish modern chat apps had that.
Almost all the places I went to were completely desolate. Not just university campuses, but even "top destinations." I saw maybe two or three other avatars total.
I just don't see myself ever wanting VR-like graphics, now that the Internet is plenty fast for live video. But I like the idea of a world of many different spaces that you can explore. I used to love MUDs. If Google Hangouts had thousands of public rooms with random people doing random stuff (and some process for weeding out crazy/naked people), I'd probably like it. Maybe that will be the legacy of Second Life.
posted by miyabo at 8:35 PM on August 20, 2015
First impressions: The graphics are TERRIBLE, the movement/camera control is really primitive, and the thing is constantly freezing up for a second or two at a time. Not cool!
There's some great off-the-wall features like voice morphing -- I wish modern chat apps had that.
Almost all the places I went to were completely desolate. Not just university campuses, but even "top destinations." I saw maybe two or three other avatars total.
I just don't see myself ever wanting VR-like graphics, now that the Internet is plenty fast for live video. But I like the idea of a world of many different spaces that you can explore. I used to love MUDs. If Google Hangouts had thousands of public rooms with random people doing random stuff (and some process for weeding out crazy/naked people), I'd probably like it. Maybe that will be the legacy of Second Life.
posted by miyabo at 8:35 PM on August 20, 2015
Oh, and I was very surprised that there is no official Second Life mobile client. There are a couple of other VR style apps that are apparently trying to fill that vacuum, but none are all that sophisticated. It seems like an obvious gap.
posted by miyabo at 8:39 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by miyabo at 8:39 PM on August 20, 2015
Second Life looks pretty good to me on ultra settings, with a decent rig, and provided I'm somewhere that actually looks nice / is well designed. So, yeah, caveats abound. In my experience what's most jarring about graphics in SL is the lag between advances in the avatar vs the sims themselves. Many places I hang out are full (because they're sex sims) of people wearing stuff that came out last week, in a room that hasn't changed in five years.
Ah, if only some institution had preserved my favourite abandoned (now dead) sim: The Kubrick Rooms. "You can't fuck here, this is the War Room!"
posted by Lorin at 9:58 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Ah, if only some institution had preserved my favourite abandoned (now dead) sim: The Kubrick Rooms. "You can't fuck here, this is the War Room!"
posted by Lorin at 9:58 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]
Having said that, if I logged on Second Life for the first time today I'd probably give up after five minutes. The client is a counterintuitive user-experience nightmare that uses an obscene amount of resources.
posted by Lorin at 10:02 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Lorin at 10:02 PM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
In the late 90's I had a student job in admissions at UC Santa Cruz, one of my tasks was a periodic reboot of the Active Worlds server in the closet.
posted by twjordan at 11:12 PM on August 20, 2015
posted by twjordan at 11:12 PM on August 20, 2015
Unfair slam on ENC for the pirate ship, as the school is well-known for being the Pirates.
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:42 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by chainsofreedom at 5:42 AM on August 21, 2015 [2 favorites]
I was big into Second Life from about 2004 - 2009. The early days were really fun. Lots of techy nerdy types doing lots of creating in the sandbox environment. I used to log in and just fly around and stop to chat with people building things. I built a lot of 3D stuff, and got into creating avatars mostly styled around mecha and sci-fi themed armor.
SL used to have a welcome area that was the gateway for new users. I started earning a modest income by establishing a storefront that was located in the "Miramare" area nearby. I started with a small plot and gradually bought surrounding plots as people moved to other areas. My storefront turned into a huge art-deco-meets-Tron tower as I played with the 3D building tools.
By 2006, I was making roughly $250 per month in sales, which was a nice little side income. My income took a huge hit when Linden Lab decentralized the new user gateway. It took away most of my passer-by traffic from new users. As SL grew, it became a lot more difficult to stand out among the hundreds of new areas being added.
In my opinion, one of the bad moves made by Linden Lab was monetizing "dwell", later called "traffic". It was modeled similarly to website hits, where the number of people hanging out in your area earned you money. This was very quickly gamed by people who created virtual clubs, casinos and virtual sex clubs. Suddenly the fun virtual world sandbox was turning into a shitty virtual Las Vegas. Buying and selling land also was being heavily gamed.
And of course, the internet had no end of lulz mocking furries and other "fringe" folks who were trying to make a virtual space for themselves.
It all felt like something that could have been so much more.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:17 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
SL used to have a welcome area that was the gateway for new users. I started earning a modest income by establishing a storefront that was located in the "Miramare" area nearby. I started with a small plot and gradually bought surrounding plots as people moved to other areas. My storefront turned into a huge art-deco-meets-Tron tower as I played with the 3D building tools.
By 2006, I was making roughly $250 per month in sales, which was a nice little side income. My income took a huge hit when Linden Lab decentralized the new user gateway. It took away most of my passer-by traffic from new users. As SL grew, it became a lot more difficult to stand out among the hundreds of new areas being added.
In my opinion, one of the bad moves made by Linden Lab was monetizing "dwell", later called "traffic". It was modeled similarly to website hits, where the number of people hanging out in your area earned you money. This was very quickly gamed by people who created virtual clubs, casinos and virtual sex clubs. Suddenly the fun virtual world sandbox was turning into a shitty virtual Las Vegas. Buying and selling land also was being heavily gamed.
And of course, the internet had no end of lulz mocking furries and other "fringe" folks who were trying to make a virtual space for themselves.
It all felt like something that could have been so much more.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:17 AM on August 21, 2015 [3 favorites]
Presumably if someone comes up with a more usable virtual space than SL, people would try it. I could never get in to Second Life, but I do know a couple who met and married there (and eventually in real life), which was cool. There are indications that society is moving away from the car as some fundamental principle of mobility, and a many-splendored virtual space would still be a fun alternative.
posted by sneebler at 7:57 AM on August 21, 2015
posted by sneebler at 7:57 AM on August 21, 2015
By 2006, I was making roughly $250 per month in sales, which was a nice little side income. My income took a huge hit when Linden Lab decentralized the new user gateway.
They've rolled through a variety of different starting areas and A/B testing kept showing that none of them changed user retention. A lot of residents think that part of the problem is that SL is so decentralized, so who you meet becomes very important, and meeting people is relatively difficult. That isn't an easy problem to fix, when starting areas is full of people being cruel to everyone under a day. I've long wished they did more with bringing people in and watching them explore Second Life to test the different starting areas, as I have the sense that different things help different people.
I suspect Sansar is going to front-load customizing an avatar which is cohesive with the standard one and fairly good looking. One issue now is to get shiny hands and feet, for example, one must buy them - the defaults are awful. Rigged mesh brought about a lot of bodies and body parts, but the ability to customize them and have them respond to browser effects (like speaking) has been hamstrung by how piecemeal SL coding tends to be (no wonder for something so old!). I still think they might have been able to add new standard meshes - a female and male 2.0 so to speak - but for all I know it's too messy server-side to pull something like that off.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:30 PM on August 21, 2015
They've rolled through a variety of different starting areas and A/B testing kept showing that none of them changed user retention. A lot of residents think that part of the problem is that SL is so decentralized, so who you meet becomes very important, and meeting people is relatively difficult. That isn't an easy problem to fix, when starting areas is full of people being cruel to everyone under a day. I've long wished they did more with bringing people in and watching them explore Second Life to test the different starting areas, as I have the sense that different things help different people.
I suspect Sansar is going to front-load customizing an avatar which is cohesive with the standard one and fairly good looking. One issue now is to get shiny hands and feet, for example, one must buy them - the defaults are awful. Rigged mesh brought about a lot of bodies and body parts, but the ability to customize them and have them respond to browser effects (like speaking) has been hamstrung by how piecemeal SL coding tends to be (no wonder for something so old!). I still think they might have been able to add new standard meshes - a female and male 2.0 so to speak - but for all I know it's too messy server-side to pull something like that off.
posted by Deoridhe at 12:30 PM on August 21, 2015
SecondLife was huge in libraries. Huge.
Naturally this meant that in library school we had a section of a class where our assignment was to sign up for SL, get an avatar, and do a few things. I can still remember how painfully awkward the whole process was and how vocally we disliked it. Not to mention the awkward moment when my group wandered into some kind of sex shop area (which is totally fine! just not when I'm trying to do a class assignment).
To this day I can't imagine how universities thought that this was going to be the next big thing. Even in 2009 it was clear that the internet had passed SL by.
posted by librarylis at 2:46 PM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]
Naturally this meant that in library school we had a section of a class where our assignment was to sign up for SL, get an avatar, and do a few things. I can still remember how painfully awkward the whole process was and how vocally we disliked it. Not to mention the awkward moment when my group wandered into some kind of sex shop area (which is totally fine! just not when I'm trying to do a class assignment).
To this day I can't imagine how universities thought that this was going to be the next big thing. Even in 2009 it was clear that the internet had passed SL by.
posted by librarylis at 2:46 PM on August 23, 2015 [2 favorites]
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posted by persona au gratin at 3:03 PM on August 20, 2015