Articles
Commons-based Peer Production in Second Life
anas (United Kingdom) · 17/6/2007 02:34 · 13 votes
As one would naturally expect, the session was packed with creativity, innovations and new ideas. A brief explanation of the motivation behind the increased adoption of Second Life in diverse fields was a logical start. Speakers reviewed some distinct capabilities of Second Life that make it an attractive platform for peer production and highly interactive learning experiences. Anna Berthold from USC explained the power of virtual worlds in transcending many barriers such as language, geography, age, gender ..etc. She talked about the experience of USC in utilising Second Life in its Public Diplomacy course. Hints and tips from the lessons learned of this experience were highlighted, including issues and challenges that implementers of virtual worlds and peer produced learning environments should take into consideration. Anna mentioned the aims of the Public Diplomacy course, which included the exploration of new ways to connect with other cultures and to encourage dialogue using virtual worlds.
Speakers then provided several examples of the creative events taking place in Second Life. Interestingly enough, that included more than 50 live music performances every night! The empowering environment provided by Second Life enabled users to actively engage in the production of very innovative and creative content that can only be generated in such a collaborative community. Interaction and involvement are further enhanced by the rich experience afforded by the 3D and Multimedia capabilities of the platform. It was stated, however, that virtual worlds can not completely substitute textual information. The issue here becomes one of finding the right balance between text and virtual worlds.
The discussion then steered into the human aspect of Second Life. As the virtual environment highly resembles the real world, there is plenty of space for the human side. Principles such as trust, reciprocity and socialization can be easily evidenced in Second Life. This also led to a bottom-up approach to social organisation and governance. Avatars are increasingly getting involved in business undertakings in the virtual world. Complete ecosystems are being built and developed with the community attempting to build appropriate arbitration mechanisms. The evidence clearly shows that value creation in Second Life is becoming serious business.
Later on, the issue of high bandwidth requirements to run Second Life was raised. This was claimed to prevent access to the innovative platform by many people in the South who can not afford the large pipes. Jean Miller from Linden Labs announced a program that will be launched shortly (The Global Provider Program) to help overcome this limitation and assist also in addressing the cultural and language barriers. The program will distribute the required infrastructure to enable local providers to serve the demand of users in their own locality. Cory Onderjka talked about the a plan to open source Second Life, which would address the exponential growth of the platform and waive the fears of Second Life being run by a single company.
A participant questions what would happen if countries that are very sensitive to freedom of information asked Linden Labs to either filter content according to state imposed rules or quit the market. The response was that there is no much clarity about how this issue may be addressed, and the case of Google filtering content in China was given as an example.
The last call was for everyone to actively engage and come up with innovative, extraordinary ideas that can be applied in the virtual world. The required technology is already there, and functioning amazingly well. Others are already engaging in building and creating content in a peer-based manner, a taster of which can be quickly observed in Second Life. Creative Commons is another great enabler to support this peer production environment to address any legal issues and maintain tractability and adaptability. These tools can certainly be used in more interesting ways, and the future seems to look awesome.
Speakers then provided several examples of the creative events taking place in Second Life. Interestingly enough, that included more than 50 live music performances every night! The empowering environment provided by Second Life enabled users to actively engage in the production of very innovative and creative content that can only be generated in such a collaborative community. Interaction and involvement are further enhanced by the rich experience afforded by the 3D and Multimedia capabilities of the platform. It was stated, however, that virtual worlds can not completely substitute textual information. The issue here becomes one of finding the right balance between text and virtual worlds.
The discussion then steered into the human aspect of Second Life. As the virtual environment highly resembles the real world, there is plenty of space for the human side. Principles such as trust, reciprocity and socialization can be easily evidenced in Second Life. This also led to a bottom-up approach to social organisation and governance. Avatars are increasingly getting involved in business undertakings in the virtual world. Complete ecosystems are being built and developed with the community attempting to build appropriate arbitration mechanisms. The evidence clearly shows that value creation in Second Life is becoming serious business.
Later on, the issue of high bandwidth requirements to run Second Life was raised. This was claimed to prevent access to the innovative platform by many people in the South who can not afford the large pipes. Jean Miller from Linden Labs announced a program that will be launched shortly (The Global Provider Program) to help overcome this limitation and assist also in addressing the cultural and language barriers. The program will distribute the required infrastructure to enable local providers to serve the demand of users in their own locality. Cory Onderjka talked about the a plan to open source Second Life, which would address the exponential growth of the platform and waive the fears of Second Life being run by a single company.
A participant questions what would happen if countries that are very sensitive to freedom of information asked Linden Labs to either filter content according to state imposed rules or quit the market. The response was that there is no much clarity about how this issue may be addressed, and the case of Google filtering content in China was given as an example.
The last call was for everyone to actively engage and come up with innovative, extraordinary ideas that can be applied in the virtual world. The required technology is already there, and functioning amazingly well. Others are already engaging in building and creating content in a peer-based manner, a taster of which can be quickly observed in Second Life. Creative Commons is another great enabler to support this peer production environment to address any legal issues and maintain tractability and adaptability. These tools can certainly be used in more interesting ways, and the future seems to look awesome.
tags: Cardiff United Kingdom science-research second life peer review icommons summit07
extracted from:Creative Commons
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