Second Life & Anthropology

By Net · 1 Comment

Thanks to Kaiser’s new blog I came across anthropologist Grant Brackens great insightful post on "Second Life the New Disney of Vaporville?" Its alwasy great to find some real thinkers up in the cloud (too many linkers and not many thinkers..). I often get a lot of questions about Second Life. And to their surprise I am not all that excited about it. Sure, I have a SL identity : Net Nakamura, I have been been flying around, waded the deep waters around SL islands – but from this to open to buy and island, open a radio station, buy a building or launch a company? Please – get a life!

Grant holds that SL is really a stage without actors, and with no people – no anthropology. I couldn’t agree more. Most of the time you just find yourself walking around alone, until finally you run into some geek either insulting you, leaving crytical comments or some gal’ that is trying to get a hold on flying..

As a matter of fact, when I think about it – its a totally dead place, no action, full of emptyness and geeks dreaming of flying around. Don’t know about you, but I prefer REAL life – life is with people.

Having said that, I believe that SL will pave the way for more entertaining and accessable virtual worlds in the years to come. Its a nice experiment, but to appeal to real people – there has to be more meat on the bone..The more I think about it, I think Virtual Worlds have to be more similar to a good gaming platform