Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual community created entirely by its membership. Members assume an identity and take up residence in Second Life, creating a customized avatar or personage to represent themselves. The avatar moves about in the virtual world using mouse control and intuitive keyboard buttons. Second Life’s virtual world also includes sound; wind in the swaying trees, audible conversation, and built-in chat and instant messaging. Residents buy property, start businesses, game with other residents, create objects, join clubs, attend classes, or just hang out.
It's hard to get your head around the fact that people are living out their own real lives, yet are wanting to live out a second life being themselves or someone completely different online. Are they not happy with their real life? Maybe there's things that they want to achieve in second life that they didn't in real life? Is our world that bad??Second Life is ridiculous. I don't see the need to have another life away from your own real life. I find my life terrific. I'm extremely happy with my life and would certainly struggle to find the time to have a second life online. There must be some very unhappy people, or curious people that would spend hour after hour on Second Life living out another. They must feel that it is real enough for them to continue pursuing it.
Second Life has also been an area for businesses to be established and flourish. Businesses selling real estate, fashionable clothing, and various items for the avatars in Second Life such as new skins, clothing, accessories, hair styles, and cars using real money.
Second life was to be the 'next big thing' however it really never achieved this. There are still many that use Second Life, but certainly not the amount of users Facebook has. Universities around the country jumped on board believing Second Life was going to take off.
Second Life is used as a platform to deliver lectures and as a place for organising group assignments and having discussions. Swinburne University has taken this on board. This method is very attractive for students that are spending many hours of each day online and are already involved in Second Life. Second Life provides means for multimodal communication students can use text-based chat inside Second Life to ask questions and participate and the teacher can answer and respond at a suitable time without interruption. It is possible to communicate through different channels at the same time, and students can use a channel that best suits them. The use of avatars gives students some level of anonymity with students ‘hiding’ behind their avatars.The existence of multimodal and non-interfering means of communication and socialisation by using chat, instant messages and voice calls in personal and group interaction provides users a wider range of possibilities to communicate than in face-to-face sessions.
Swinburne University in Second Life
Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief.
“People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening. The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”
Meadows comment is somewhat true. Second Life is a form of reality in the fact that it is a physicality; something that we can see and something that we can participate in. However, it is far from our actual society and cultures. Second Life is fundamentally a glorified computer game; a place where people can escape their perceived meaningless existence.
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