{"id":115,"date":"2007-11-21T17:35:58","date_gmt":"2007-11-22T00:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=115"},"modified":"2008-08-01T09:51:27","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T16:51:27","slug":"misunderstanding-second-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2007\/11\/misunderstanding-second-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Misunderstanding Second Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was so excited when my article, “Discover Babylon: E-Learning Power on Second Life”<\/a> came out in the November 2007 issue of School Library Journal<\/em><\/strong>, I couldn’t wait to share it with my mother.\u00a0 My mother, who is a non-native english speaker, who immigrated from Taiwan and doesn’t have more than a 6th grade education\u00a0in chinese, was so proud of me but didn’t understand a word that was on the page.\u00a0 I was really happy that my first magazine article would be celebrated by my\u00a0mom but equally frustrated that language and educational barriers prevented\u00a0her from understanding\u00a0my article.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0incessant phone calls\u00a0to\u00a0Sachin Patil at the FAS\u00a0for clarification,\u00a0consultation with George Needham at OCLC, and Director\/Producer of Weston Woods, Paul Gagne,\u00a0to verify that\u00a0my writing\u00a0could be understood at the most basic of levels.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Communication:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0frustrations\u00a0really underscore the “disconnect” between people who understand Second Life and those who’ve never even heard of it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 No wonder those who are denizens of Second Life are weary about teaching newbies the basics.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It’s analogous to\u00a0helping a patron who comes into the library whose\u00a0second language is english\u00a0but has never touched a computer in her life, demanding to use Rosetta Stone fluently.\u00a0 And the newbies are weary about taking lessons from avatars.\u00a0 How do you take\u00a0lessons seriously when the teacher standing before you\u00a0looks 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.<\/p>\n

Semantics:<\/strong><\/p>\n

You say first-life, I say real-life.\u00a0 You say in-world, I say in-game.\u00a0 Game, serious, world, platform–let’s call the whole thing off…<\/em><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The MacArthur Foundation in their conference talked about how innovations are happening at such a rapid pace between multiple disciplines in virtual planets\u00a0eg: Second Life, that there\u00a0hasn’t been\u00a0time to describe what is happening.\u00a0 The language can’t keep up.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 For instance, I would\u00a0distinguish the differences between the term first-life and real-life because\u00a0my 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.\u00a0 Those in Second Life, whom have never touched a MUVE (Multi User Virtual Environment)\u00a0before Second Life, would equate their first lives with their real lives.\u00a0 And no one outside of Second Life understands jargon like “grid, rez, prims and terraforming”–the virtual planet’s vernacular.<\/p>\n

Education and Non-profits:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0It’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\u00a0emanating\u00a0from virtual planets, despite the frustrations.\u00a0 It’s important to have virtual planets as a tool for kids that teaches innovation.\u00a0 Innovative teaching is very hard to do in the traditional classroom.\u00a0 Take a look at this video of What Are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds?<\/font><\/a>\u00a0which was a conference that took place at the University of Southern California on November 14th, 2007.\u00a0 Put away all doubts that ALSC shouldn’t have a presence on Second Life.\u00a0 Six hundred librarians on Second Life couldn’t be wrong:\u00a0 http:\/\/takeonedigital.blip.tv\/file\/488039\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Being 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.\u00a0\u00a0For those staunchly rooted in real\u00a0life, we have a hard time reconciling\u00a0what’s tangible with the abstract, what’s theoretical and what’s\u00a0already being practiced.\u00a0 Furthermore, Second Life really tests our psychological boundaries\u00a0and takes us to the limit of what is acceptable, unacceptable, sane and insane.\u00a0 To our familiar mind, there’s something disturbing about shopping for eyeballs or taking classes from a furry wolf avatar.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

To\u00a0those who’ve never touched an MUVE, it’s hard to see what’s so great about it.\u00a0 They see it on a superficial level like the game, The Sims.\u00a0 Why would you want to\u00a0take out the trash\u00a0or wash\u00a0the 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.\u00a0 From ignorance and misunderstanding, prejudice is born.<\/p>\n

Prejudices:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0It’s important to go into Second Life with an open mind and not be afraid to have new experiences that are “alien” to us.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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”\u00a0to just taking it one day at a time and not assuming too much.\u00a0 Maybe that avatar who bumped into you on Orientation Island wasn’t doing it to be spiteful but a vigilante himself.\u00a0 He wants to rid the virtual planet of “zombies” or gold farmers who exploit a region for traffic.\u00a0 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\u00a0to translate english into korean and performing the “Patronis Spell” with a korean accent.\u00a0 Maybe throwing virtual stones like a zealot\u00a0at the group called Babylonian Whores isn’t such a good idea because you take on the very griefer mentality you despise in other people.\u00a0 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<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If we take a good look at ourselves, we are all still people from the same human race–Baby-Boomers, Generation Xers, Millenials, Ys\u00a0and\u00a0Avatars.\u00a0 Yes, let’s be polite and not call people “freaks” or “old fogies.”\u00a0 It’s a misconception that Senior Citizens are not on Second Life–after all, they have more time to spend on virtual planets\u00a0than the average middle-aged person if they’re retired.\u00a0 And good for them for taking our prescription\u00a0of life-long learning.\u00a0 In Edmonton, Alberta Canada they even have “Wii habilitation” for the elderly:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/canada\/edmonton\/story\/2007\/05\/11\/wii-therapy.html<\/a><\/p>\n

People playing Second Life are often told to get a life or are dubbed the ones who drunk from the “kool-aid.”\u00a0It’s rude and uncalled for.\u00a0Take it from someone who has\u00a0drunk from the “kool-aid.”\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 My mother, who is a non-native english speaker, who immigrated from Taiwan and doesn’t have more than a 6th grade education\u00a0in chinese, was so proud of me but didn’t understand a word that was on the page.\u00a0 I was really happy that my first magazine article would be celebrated by my\u00a0mom but equally frustrated that language and educational barriers prevented\u00a0her from understanding\u00a0my article.\u00a0 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\u00a0incessant phone calls\u00a0to\u00a0Sachin Patil at the FAS\u00a0for clarification,\u00a0consultation with George Needham at OCLC, and Director\/Producer of Weston Woods, Paul Gagne,\u00a0to verify that\u00a0my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[24,30,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digital-world","category-projects-research","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}