I was so excited when my article, “Discover Babylon: E-Learning Power on Second Life” came out in the November 2007 issue of School Library Journal, I couldn’t wait to share it with my mother. My mother, who is a non-native english speaker, who immigrated from Taiwan and doesn’t have more than a 6th grade education in chinese, was so proud of me but didn’t understand a word that was on the page. I was really happy that my first magazine article would be celebrated by my mom but equally frustrated that language and educational barriers prevented her from understanding my article.
The second level of frustration comes from the fact that many of my colleagues do not understand what I have written despite the meticulous nature in which I approached the article with incessant phone calls to Sachin Patil at the FAS for clarification, consultation with George Needham at OCLC, and Director/Producer of Weston Woods, Paul Gagne, to verify that my writing could be understood at the most basic of levels. And it is through no fault of my colleagues that the language to describe Second Life is still in its primordial stage, leaving a language and cultural barrier between those who have a presence in Second Life and those who don’t.
Communication:
The frustrations really underscore the “disconnect” between people who understand Second Life and those who’ve never even heard of it. Not only are there divides between those who are educated and those who are not, but there are divides between those who are technically savvy and those who are not and the role-players and the real-lifers. No wonder those who are denizens of Second Life are weary about teaching newbies the basics. It’s analogous to helping a patron who comes into the library whose second language is english but has never touched a computer in her life, demanding to use Rosetta Stone fluently. And the newbies are weary about taking lessons from avatars. How do you take lessons seriously when the teacher standing before you looks like a dragon and lectures in a Carl Sagan voice? We tell ourselves it’s otherworldly–the stuff for “Star-Trek” fanatics and not for “normal” people.
Semantics:
You say first-life, I say real-life. You say in-world, I say in-game. Game, serious, world, platform–let’s call the whole thing off…
It’s very hard to even start an intelligent conversation about Second Life because at present, the discursive language is constantly being invented and reinvented. The MacArthur Foundation in their conference talked about how innovations are happening at such a rapid pace between multiple disciplines in virtual planets eg: Second Life, that there hasn’t been time to describe what is happening. The language can’t keep up. And as you can plainly see from my above phrase, people are still in disagreement about the terms used to describe the transactions in Second Life. For instance, I would distinguish the differences between the term first-life and real-life because my first-life was Asheron’s Call (MMORPG), before Second Life was invented and my real-life is my physical life that I live right now as a children’s librarian in the King County Library System. Those in Second Life, whom have never touched a MUVE (Multi User Virtual Environment) before Second Life, would equate their first lives with their real lives. And no one outside of Second Life understands jargon like “grid, rez, prims and terraforming”–the virtual planet’s vernacular.
Education and Non-profits:
It’s important to have educators, librarians and public, non-profit entities in Second Life so that marketers and commercial companies don’t dominate and influence the education emanating from virtual planets, despite the frustrations. It’s important to have virtual planets as a tool for kids that teaches innovation. Innovative teaching is very hard to do in the traditional classroom. Take a look at this video of What Are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds? which was a conference that took place at the University of Southern California on November 14th, 2007. Put away all doubts that ALSC shouldn’t have a presence on Second Life. Six hundred librarians on Second Life couldn’t be wrong: http://takeonedigital.blip.tv/file/488039/
Being someone who is able to see both sides of the equation, having one foot in Second Life and the other Real Life, I am able to pinpoint the exact place where the real and second worlds collide. For those staunchly rooted in real life, we have a hard time reconciling what’s tangible with the abstract, what’s theoretical and what’s already being practiced. Furthermore, Second Life really tests our psychological boundaries and takes us to the limit of what is acceptable, unacceptable, sane and insane. To our familiar mind, there’s something disturbing about shopping for eyeballs or taking classes from a furry wolf avatar. We see with our lens of perception so ingrained by the society we’ve grown up in that it’s hard to be forgiving of avatars who are strange. Consider the anti-furry avatar movement happening in Second Life which is blatant discrimination against avatars with furry characteristics–picketed demonstrations and islands that explicity state, “No large non-human avatars allowed” have been documented.
To those who’ve never touched an MUVE, it’s hard to see what’s so great about it. They see it on a superficial level like the game, The Sims. Why would you want to take out the trash or wash the dishes in virtual life when you can do that in real-life? For those in Second Life, the esoteric language, the thrill of the new technological frontier, social networking, explosion of creativity, the innovations are so amazing that it’s hard to fathom why people wouldn’t understand the importance of doing work on virtual planets. From ignorance and misunderstanding, prejudice is born.
Prejudices:
It’s important to go into Second Life with an open mind and not be afraid to have new experiences that are “alien” to us. It’s important to take things at face-value and not project characteristics onto the avatars standing before you, not knowing the person in real-life. In the short time I’ve been on Second Life, I’ve come a long ways from the vigilante attitude I carried into it as the “pillar of truth” to just taking it one day at a time and not assuming too much. Maybe that avatar who bumped into you on Orientation Island wasn’t doing it to be spiteful but a vigilante himself. He wants to rid the virtual planet of “zombies” or gold farmers who exploit a region for traffic. Maybe that Harry Potter avatar who was speaking gibberish to you when you landed in Koreatown was not trying to spook you but trying out a Linguiphile plug-in to translate english into korean and performing the “Patronis Spell” with a korean accent. Maybe throwing virtual stones like a zealot at the group called Babylonian Whores isn’t such a good idea because you take on the very griefer mentality you despise in other people. And real-lifers, it’s important not to do the name-calling as described in Suzanne Delong’s article, “Nix the Name-Calling” from the October 2007 issue of American Libraries.
If we take a good look at ourselves, we are all still people from the same human race–Baby-Boomers, Generation Xers, Millenials, Ys and Avatars. Yes, let’s be polite and not call people “freaks” or “old fogies.” It’s a misconception that Senior Citizens are not on Second Life–after all, they have more time to spend on virtual planets than the average middle-aged person if they’re retired. And good for them for taking our prescription of life-long learning. In Edmonton, Alberta Canada they even have “Wii habilitation” for the elderly:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/05/11/wii-therapy.html
People playing Second Life are often told to get a life or are dubbed the ones who drunk from the “kool-aid.” It’s rude and uncalled for. Take it from someone who has drunk from the “kool-aid.” I’m still the person I was yesterday, performing story times for youngsters 1 to 2 years old at the library, except with that much more knowledge, enlightened by my virtual planet experience.