Not so sure I buy the Second Life is the future of the Internet part. Maybe something similar, though. On the bright side, they didn't make it out to be a negative thing that slowly erodes the morals and values of society. The report seemed rather positive. It wasn't well done though (the voice-over was constantly speaking over someone on-screen).

How does second life stay popular? I barely can get a solid framrate, and everything is constantly loading and being buggy? Seriously, it is probably the worst place on the internet

crispyfritters, you say "social networking" as if that's a bad thing. Yeah, its about social networking -- like the telephone, email, and texting.

SL has very little to do with FPS and much more to do with people wanting to connect in new and entertaining ways with other people. Sure, its not likely to sway the outcome of the elections in 2008, but a politician would be wise not to ignore these virtual communities.

Frankly, given the response to the campaign sites placed in SL already, politicians would be VERY wise to ignore these communities. Second Life is already associated with child pornography rings, age-play groups, money laundering, etc. Why subject your campaign to association with these things, however tenuous the connection, when you can just campaign to the same people in First Life?

I certainly agree, and let's be honest here, SL is much more than just a pornography distribution center. But because of its courting of the media, it has subjected itself to a much more rigorous evaluation of any faults it might have. There is probably far more child pornography being distributed through MySpace or over GMail than on Second Life, but by ignoring the problem for so long the Lindens have made a difficult situation positively radioactive. While I applaud their apparent intentions to restrict age play within the community now that the matter has become a legal situation, this is likely the beginning of the death knell for Linden's laissez-faire community standards policies and, by extension, much of the draw of Second Life as an entity.

I joined Second Life over six months ago...... I haven't played it in over six months, aside from the technical problems, I just didn't find it the least bit entertaining.

"A candidate has no need to put up a flat web page when they can create a... space"

No NEED? I think The Internet has a few more users than Second Life does, and is a bit more accessible.

Eric, I couldn't disagree more. I've been in SL for more than a year and I very rarely come across pornographic content. Provocative perhaps, but not porn.

Sure, you can find it if you search for it, just like the net. But it doesn't jump out at you everywhere you go.

Riko, I think that if, as I gather from your blog and what I've read from you previously, your intent in using Second Life is of an academic nature, it's easy to sift through the filth and find some really neat content. I've attended Harvard law courses, watched feature length films, and had some great philosophical discussions in SL, and seen some really well designed sims along the way. But given all that I would still posit that the vast majority of content in Second Life is geared towards sex, if not outright pornographic. That this material isn't simply strewn about everywhere doesn't change the degree to which it is prevalent and easily accessible.

i live in syracuse! woah!

@Nekojin

Still doesn't make it any less as creepy.

@John Sadly, that's more attributed to the fact that their servers are as far as I hear pretty outdated and they don't have nearly enough

@AbsumZer0 So long as the people who make the items are satisfied, what's the problem? And since when did graphics on a game matter all that much? I mean, sure, it pays to see what you're doing and it does help to have a pretty face, but Second Life is partly about making your own fun. Hell, I visited a combat zone yesterday and tested my shooting skills. With the proper items SL easily becomes a first person shooter.

Attempting to put a percentage on how much "sex" there is inside Second Life is like asking how much "sex" there is on the net, or even in real life. Doubtlessly a lot for all three, but exactly how much depends on perspective. If I was a gaffer in the porn video industry I'd probably say the whole world is 90% porn. I almost never *see* it in SL... but then I don't go looking for it either.

As to complaints about the visual graphics, there's a big difference between a videogame and a real-time virtual world which has built-in tools allowing people to create 3D objects... in real time. At the most basic, the models themselves are different; videogames are almost exclusively pre-made polyon meshes whereas SL uses something closer to what CAD applications use (the avatar mesh in SL is actually *one* pre-made mesh with slider controls to offset portions of it; nothing more).

This system is used (according to what I recall hearing from LL) to improve the dynamic loading of the geometry; it's faster. However, by default at this stage of development, that means having graphics which don't match the less bandwidth-constrained videogames out there (SL is a 50Mb download whereas most games now are running ten or twenty times that). Eventually this kind of technology will catch up, but to compare them now is, imo, a mistake.

With regard to "hype", as someone who routinely criticizes Linden Lab's actions and policies, the one thing I can't say is that I believe they've "hyped" it. They have a business and they have a product. They sell that product just like any other business. I rarely see ads for SL. I rarely hear of LL doing anything more than giving interviews and going out to give presentations. Is that "hype". Not in my book.

Now if you're referring to Clay Shirky's drivel, I'd (once again) take issue with what this individual had to say... mostly because a) he admitted to not really being familiar with or even using SL and b) because he clearly made the same mistake he accused the MSM when dealing the "hype" card: he didn't do his research. I won't waste words here, but for details, you can either start with a post I made about it ( http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1179 ) or go directly to another site on which I both commented and left a bunch of links to Terra Nova threads in which Shirky was involved ( http://www.howardowens.com/2007/be-skeptical-of-the-hype-around-virtual-... ).

If there is a videogame that does anything like what SL does, please provide a link. I'd love to check it out.

If there is a videogame/virtual world developer that provides more statistics than Linden Lab, please provide a link. I'm not saying that LL doesn't play word games. On the contrary, long before Shirky some of us were pointing out issues regarding user numbers and dollar figures. Only I hope most of us are sufficiently intelligent (unlike most of MSM) to see through the smokescreen thrown up not just by LL, but by most every Web 2.0 company hoping to promote themselves.

With regard to the recent issues regarding child porn, I think we should separate the RL stuff from the virtual stuff. No one is arguing that the RL stuff needs to be addressed, but that goes for not just SL but for a whole lot of internet sites (especially the new YouTube pron-clones). However, if I'm not mistaken, the "virtual porn" issue is still up for serious debate, and I, for one, am not ready to throw an adult in prison for navigating a set of pixels into personally visually-stimulating compositions with another adult controlling a different set of pixels and doing the same. So long as no one is harmed, the idea that we would prosecute individuals for such victimless crimes makes no sense to me. And while there is the oft-used argument that such behavior is connected to real life pedophilia, I don't buy that anymore than I buy the idea that people who frag others in FPS deathmatches are necessarily encouraged to go on killing sprees in their community.

Lastly, if there is one thing that I hope we can all agree upon, it's that SL is interesting... and sometimes interesting because it highlights the difference in attitudes we have regarding certain issues. Personally, I'd rather these things be learned, studied and resolved in ugly 3D chatrooms than in real life.