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The Unofficial Second Life Building Guide – 5 copies up for grabs

October 4, 2008 by 26 Comments

Killer Guides are a well-known e-book producer in the MMO sphere. Their recently launched Second Life Building Guide is a 120-page run through on content creation in Second Life

The review

As a true content creation amateur, I feel I’m well placed to assess the usefulness of the guide for the new builder in Second Life. The building project the guide walks you through is a mansion – not the most intuitive Second Life build but one that involves a lot of key building strategies that you can apply to other creations. The instructions are comprehensive, with lots of screen shots of both the Second Life interface and the outcomes of your work at each step. This was one of the better features for me – being able to see what my work should be looking like at each step. If you’ve ever tried putting Ikea furniture together, you’ll know what I mean.

Being more of a beginner’s guide, sculpted prims are understandably put in the too-hard basket – you’re advised to seek out other options for that. Creating your own textures is another section I gained a lot from – it’s one of many sections that reference Adobe Photoshop, which is superb if you own that application. If not, you may be a little frustrated although most graphics applications have similar tools, so with a little extrapolation you’ll still glean a lot of useful tips.

Other items beside the mansion are covered in some depth. For me a highlight was the clothing tutorial – there’s some nice reinforcement of principles learnt earlier in the book, although again you’ll need Adobe Photoshop to follow the steps in full. Killer Guides have an online resource centre that’s referenced throughout the guide, so there’s plenty of free goodies to add value to the learning experience.

For me, the guide was very useful in getting my head around key concepts that determine success in content creation in Second Life. It’s the sort of publication I would have loved when I did my first experimentations with content (a horrendous ‘freeform’ metallic sculpture was my first effort in late 2006). There are free Second Life tutorials out there for sure, but if you plan on spending some time building in Second Life, the readability and layout of this guide is exemplary. At US$29.95 it’s equivalent to one month’s medium-level tier fees – a worthwhile investment if you’re looking to create content for either personal satisfaction or resale.

The competition

Killer Guides are generously offering five Metaverse Journal Readers the chance to win a copy of the guide. To be in the draw, all you need to do is post a comment at the bottom of this review on what you’d like to build in Second Life if you won the guide. You’ll need to provide a valid email address, which will not be used for anything other than determining the winner of the prize.

Every valid entry (any comment that actually describes what you’d build) will be added to the draw and via a random number generator, a winner will be announced. The competition closes at midnight (AEST) on Sunday 12th October. Winners can expect to receive their prize within five working days or so after that. So comment away!

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds

“Gender Freedom Day in Digital Worlds” – hooray for diversity!

October 3, 2008 by 2 Comments

Extropia Central Nexus

The 25th October 2008 heralds the coming of a new celebration: “Gender Freedom Day in Digital Worlds.”

Gender Freedom Day is the brainchild of Sophrosyne Stenvaag, a digital individual who inhabits digital environments such as Second Life. Stenvaag envisions the Day as a promotion of “freedom of expression of gender identity and sexual preference in digital worlds” – a celebration of all choices of gender identity and sexual preference, and the ability of all the individuals to interact in a civil and respectful manner. Stenvaag is disappointed and horrified by the cultures in digital environments – the hatred of, hate crimes surrounding, and general uncivil and unnecessary expression of biases surrounding gender and sexuality difference of expression.

"That's so gay?"

The hub of the Day’s activity will be at Extropia, Stenvaag’s paradise of difference in self-expression in Second Life. However, Stenvaag hopes to spread the word of the day far and wide, and to have events engaged in throughout Second Life predominantly. Individuals from other digital environments, and even those in the atomic world, for those who have the resources to do so, are welcome to join in with the fun and festivities. As of a couple of days ago, event organisation was in full swing, with several speakers with academic backgrounds giving their commitments to makes presentations, DJs having been approached to provide entertainment throughout the fundraising party (running 2pm to 10pm SLT on the Day), and discussions with a welter of other communities and organisations progressing apace. Individuals wanting to inject their own brand of creativity, make a presentation, or generally volunteer to help out are most welcome to do so: you will want to liaise with Sophrosyne Stenvaag in Second Life.

Behaviour

The fundraiser will be collecting money on behalf of organisations who promote the ideals of the Day. The exact organisations will be determined before the money is dispensed. Stenvaag is currently open to nominations for existing organisations and start-ups who could benefit from the money. Stenvaag herself is starting the kitty at L$125,000.

The most heinous crime.

“Walk into one of the capital cities in World Of Warcraft, or the infamous “Barrens Chat,” night or day, and you’re likely to hear the foulest expressions of homophobia, gynophobia, racism and anti-Semitism. Of those, the most prevalent seems to be homophobia: “gay” and “fag” are stand-ins for anything bad, and used with abandon, despite their being in technical violation of the Terms of Service. The culture permits it.”

In a digital setting, this kind of attack via speech, in which individuals are treated as though their expression of self is invalid, in which individuals are treated as objects or “things”, and other such attacks upon the self, is more heinous than any other kind. In the atomic world, far worse things can happen to you, of course, but for those of us who live in a digital world, we have a responsibility “to not sit silent and permit a culture of hatred to flourish” in our homes.

“Attacking people for presenting their gender in the way that suits them is not okay.”

The digital advantage.

There are other reasons for holding a Day like this in a digital world, too.

  • Because the denizens of digital worlds represent a subset of the individuals represented in the atomic world. Not only does that mean that there is a smaller sample of people amongst which to spread the word, but also that folks from digital places can take the word back with them to the atomic world and make a difference there too.
  • Fewer resources are required, compared with similar efforts in the atomic world. One side effect of this is that more money can be donated to the organizations, instead of being spent only on the celebration.
  • A more diverse lot of people are recognised and represented. Not only are the common (gay, lesbian, transgender, etc) expressions of gender and sexuality able to be represented, but also those that have emerged through the existence of digital environments.

All are welcome.

Stenvaag wants everyone, of all gender and sexual persuasions, to be welcome at Gender Freedom Day, even though she is aware that this will not be a globally popular response:

“Speaking for myself, I support the freedom of expression of … any other group: as long as they refrain from hostile expression against those who differ with them, consenting members of their community should have the right to their own practices.”

Filed Under: General News, Politics, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Reducing your Second Life lag

September 30, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Tateru Nino has written a very useful guide on minimising lag in Second life – you can read it in full here.

Try saying ‘Sim Ping’ five times really quickly 😉

Whilst talking Linden Lab, CEO Mark Kingdon has provided a heads-up on progress toward a more usable Second Life. Lots more improvements are promised, the biggest one being the development of a new Second Life browser. Vint Falken has some interesting insights on what wasn’t mentioned.

Filed Under: For the new user, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Burning Life 2008

September 28, 2008 by 5 Comments

In it’s 6th year, Burning Life is the Second Life event complementary to the real-life Burning Man Project that wrapped up on the 5th September. It’s one of the best opportunities to view the enormous variety that Second Life engenders, so do spend some in-world time checking it out.

All the details are on the Linden blog and the Burning Life subsite. We’d love to promote any Australian events at Burning Life as well.

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

September 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

1. PC World (USA) – Real Life will Trump Second Life, Microsoft Says. “Microsoft’s Craig Mundie has dismissed the potential of “synthetic virtual worlds” like Second Life, saying that the potential for immersive environments will be likely realized through 3D tools that capture and model the real world. Mundie and robot/Photosynth demoMundie, who oversees research and long-term strategy for Microsoft, devoted a significant portion of his “Rethinking Computing” presentation at MIT’s Emerging Technology conference to what he called the “Spatial Web,” a blend of 3D, video, and location-aware technologies. At the center of several of his demos was Photosynth, a Microsoft software tool that can create 3D models using 2D photographs taken with an ordinary digital camera.”

2. Kotaku (USA) – ‘Next Big Thing, or Next Big Bust?’: Virtual Worlds. “The Cutter IT Journal is offering their latest issue — on the subject of the challenges of virtual worlds — for free (registration required); the issue includes articles on ‘real world’ applications of virtual worlds and the pitfalls and promises of such a presence. I’ve only had time to read the introduction and breeze quickly through the rest of the issue, but if you’re interested in the rise (?) of virtual worlds, it looks to have some interesting fodder.”

3. Associated Content (USA) – Armed Services Train in Virtual World. “It all began in 2001 when a Czech game studio released an award winning video game title on the PC called Operation Flashpoint. Developed by Bohemia Interactive Studio, the game was praised as being the most realistic war game to ever hit the market. Booming in sales with millions of copies sold, Bohemia Interactive decided to take what they have created, only this time create a product that deviates from gamers, and focuses on the United States Armed Forces and others. A new Bohemia Interactive was built in Australia, where Operation Flashpoint would be amped up into what’s called Virtual Battle Space 1 (VBS1). The USMC now uses VBS1, training soldiers in combat and strategy. It is also used by Australia and New Zealand.”

4. Law.com (USA) – An Avatar’s Bill of Rights. “The 3-D Internet, or “Web 3.0,” is an amalgam of virtual reality, convention center, circus, college campus, nightclub, mall, playground and Main Street. Users are getting their first taste of Web 3.0 on virtual world sites like Second Life, which are typically “members only” proprietary sites accessed through the Internet. People are drawn to the interactive, immersing experience these sites offer, and by some estimates there are as many as 300 million active users. Businesses are also intrigued by the promise of making real money there.”

5. Design News (USA) – Dassault Helps Microsoft Shape Virtual Earth. “outing a new 3-D remix capability, Dassault Systemes has released the latest version of Shape, its free 3-D modeling software, which also lies at the core of the newest release of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform. The new Shape 2.0, aimed at consumers who want to get their feet wet building 3-D models and similar to Google SketchUp, will now allow users to construct or “remix” 3-D scenes using models contributed by other users on the 3DVIA.com community’s content library.”

6. Gamasutra (USA) – How Do You Kickstart The Virtual Worlds Movement? “Defining the future of virtual worlds is difficult when clear guidelines for what they are and what they can do have not really been established — hence, the formation of the Virtual Worlds Roadmap Special Interest group, which plans to have its first formal workshop next month in the San Francisco Bay Area. The group, which is formed by high-placed members from a variety of technology companies, aims to meaningfully define what is required from virtual worlds in a variety of social and technological contexts, hoping to grow the nascent space beyond just a group of children’s online hangouts (like Habbo Hotel) and game-related MMO applications (such as World of Warcraft).”

7. InformationWeek (USA) – Second Life’s Popularity Rests On Breadth Of Activities. “The Second Life phenom could not have happened without the many in-world avenues for users, or residents, to express themselves, often through through collaborative play and performance.
As the company tries for a second act under a new CEO and targets new markets, users are busy doing what they’ve always done in Second Life. What is there to do in Second Life? Finding your way around and learning about what to do there can be tricky for newcomers. Here is some information to help you get started.”

8. Haber 27 (Turkey) – Textual Satisfaction: Beyond the Sex Machine. “It was just a matter of time before what we knew about autoeroticism became old news and conventional cybersex became just another devolved masturbation technique. In this era of sexual technology revolution, people are always toiling away at making things better, getting the bugs out and making a product more satisfactory. Masturbation has come a long way from finding creative ideas using items at home, other than your hand, to do the job. ”

9. The Sun (UK) – Super Mario vs … Sackboy. “Stand aside Super Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog –— this is Sackboy . . . and he is about to become a worldwide celebrity. The little cloth man is being pushed by video games giant Sony as their defining mascot for the Noughties — and he’s British. The Japanese computer giants, who are pumping millions into the character, reckon every kid in the world will want their own virtual one in the next few months.”

10. The West Australian (Australia) – A Second Life chance on the beat in WA. “WA Police have entered a new world in police recruitment – a virtual, 3D universe to attract real life budding police officers. The Second Life “Step Forward” Virtual Recruiting Pavilion is WA Police’s way of boosting new officers to the beat via the social network, Second Life.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Taking our biases with us into virtual environments.

September 26, 2008 by 1 Comment

Light skin or dark skin - it makes a difference even in virtual environments.

People are using the same cognitive tools in their social interactions within virtual environments as they would in the physical world. A recent study has confirmed this happens even though our avatars do not necessarily represent a clear picture of the people behind those avatars, with regards to gender, race, and all those other things that we have biases against.

The study’s co-investigators are Northwestern University’s Paul W. Eastwick, a doctoral student in psychology, and Wendi L. Gardner, Associate Professor of Psychology and member of Northwestern’s Center for Technology and Social Behavior. Eastwick’s past contributions revolve around romantic relationship development, and the use of speed dating and virtual environments to test psychological hypotheses. Gardner’s interests focus on the social aspects of the self, and the sorts of evaluation that are performed in the human brain that are unconscious.

Eastwick and Gardner performed the study in There.com, which is billed primarily as a fantasy environment – it is social, and the interactions are with real people, but there are no programmatical constraints on how people represent themselves within those interactions. The management at There.com showed significantly more interest in having the study performed in their virtual environment than did other services like Second Life.

Two classic social psychology experiments were performed within the realm of There.com: an avatar controlled by the study group attempted to influence an avatar controlled by a member of the native There.com populace to fulfill a request. The door-in-the-face (DITF) gambit, in which a ridiculously large request is followed by a much more reasonable request, and the foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique, in which a small, reasonable request or statement is made, followed up with a much larger request, were used. Then, observation occurred to see how people reacted to a) the request in general and b) to the appearance of two different avatars in acquiescing to the request.

As in the physical world, the most successful technique was the DITF as performed by a light-skinned individual, with an increase in compliance of 20% over a simple request; compare this to only an 8% increase in compliance for the dark-skinned individual for the same technique. Less successful was FITD, which returned a result of only slight more compliance for either skinned individual.

Research has shown this disparity in the physical world for decades. DITF relies on a person’s perception of the person making the request: is this person worth impressing, and do I feel that I can risk offending them? FITD relies more on self-perception: how do I feel about my own reputation, and do I care how I appear to the person making the request?

Interestingly, many people seem to share the opinion that virtual environments are exempt from social influence. This idea possibly stems from the anonymity of having an avatar with which you do not identify, and which has no connection with your real identity. Or perhaps from the idea that virtual environments are in essence games in which anything goes and no-one can be harmed. Or even from the perspective that virtual environments are easy to leave, and therefore there need be no social ties with them. Nonetheless, it would appear that most people using virtual environments are heavily socially invested in them, to the extent that they apply their everyday social biases to the appearance of the avatars of those they interact with, and that they are just as susceptible to social gambits designed to increase compliance.

Source:  Real-world Behavior And Biases Show Up In Virtual World

Wendi L. Gardner’s professional page.

Paul Eastwick’s entry at the Department of Psychology, Northwestern University.

Social Influence Journal article.

Filed Under: Education, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

The growing secrecy

September 25, 2008 by 9 Comments

Browsing back over some previous stories we’ve run, it reinforced to me again just how more secretive Linden Lab have become in the past year or so.

alone

There’s a growing list of communication mechanisms that have gone by the wayside:

1. The monthly population metrics are no longer supplied in anywhere near the detail they used to. We used to report monthly on the number of Australians actively using Second Life – that’s now not an option.

2. The Second Life forums are a shadow of what they were 18 months ago. There’s been more traffic recently (see point 3 below) but the community is still fairly small.

3. The official Linden blog has had a marked decrease in activity as far as communication from Linden Lab, with comments either closed or moved to the forums. Linden Lab have never argued that the blog wasn’t well read. I can vouch for the significant readership as everytime we report on a Linden blog post, we get significant traffic via the trackback – that’d be a tiny percentage of the overall traffic for each blog post published by Linden Lab.

4. The Second Life Jira is the mechanism by which issues with Second Life are reported and tracked. I’m yet to meet a person who believes it is both user-friendly and effective. Have a browse for yourself – I’d love to hear your thoughts.

5. I’ve been involved with Second Life for nearly two years, a new user in some people’s eyes. Even so, I remember when Linden Lab used to run Town Hall sessions.

6. There used to be regular updates in-world and via email from Linden Lab’s PR – I can’t remember the last time this occurred. There’s an excellent post on Linden Lab’s media management here.

The six examples above are the more obvious ones. Some communication channels like in-world Linden office hours still occur but I’d be fairly confident in saying they’re less frequent than in days of yore.

I’d be happy to admit to being a sentimental whinger if anyone can point me to where alternate communication channels have popped up in lieu of the ones above.

Ahhh… the sound of silence.

Filed Under: General News, Op-ed, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

The Watch – virtual worlds in the news

September 22, 2008 by Leave a Comment

1. Centre Daily Times (USA) – Virtual worlds provide real interaction. “When I was a boy, I loved the Tom Swift books. Whether Tom was plumbing the depths of the sea in his Jetmarine or flying into space on his Rocket Ship, technology and quick thinking always managed to save the day. Those books delightfully immersed young readers in exciting worlds of imagination and possibility. Books have long served as “immersion technologies” that transport people to alternate worlds. Today, computer technology takes immersion several steps further.”

2. GigaOM (USA) – Virtual World Marketing That Works: My Top 3 Tips. “So last year, most people decided that marketing real products in virtual worlds like Second Life doesn’t work. Since then, however, I’ve come across some avatar-driven advertising campaigns with very impressive numbers. In Gaia Online, for example, users grabbed over a million virtual copies of a Toyota Scion; in Second Life, a promotion for the IMAX screening of the latest “Harry Potter” movie was credited for boosting the movie’s ticket sales online.”

3. Orange County Register (USA) – UCI tackles ‘World of Warcraft’ mystery. “The National Science Foundation has given UC Irvine $100,000 to figure out why Americans go to greater lengths than the Chinese to modify “World of Warcraft,” the hugely popular multiplayer online game produced by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine. About 5 million Chinese play “WoW,” which is twice the number of American players. But Americans produce far more modifications, or “mods,” to enrich the gaming experience.”

4. VentureBeat (USA) – Robotgalaxy raises $5M to launch virtual world. “Robotgalaxy, a retailer that lets kids build toy robots, is developing a virtual world where players can take those robots on science fiction adventures. The New York-based company has raised a second funding round of more than $5 million to launch the game, as well as for other expansion.”

5. AsiaOne (Singapore) – Chat, shop and play in virtual S’pore by year-end. “Local Internet users and their life-like 3D digital avatars can soon sip virtual cuppas in virtual Shenton Way cafes. What’s more, they will also be able to chat, work and play in other true-to-life, online 3D cityscapes of Singapore.
This virtual world that looks and feels like Singapore is the brain child of German firm Metaversum. Virtual Singapore, which will be based on a Metaversum platform called Twinity, will be rolled out by year-end, a senior company official told BizIT this week.”

6. The Canberra Times (Australia) – Real interest in Canberrans’ virtual worlds. “Canberra software company Simmersion says its new 3D program Mycosm could rival YouTube with 30million users.
Two years ago chief executive Bob Quodling told his creative team to come up with something that would ”blow the world”. At the Virtual World Expo in Los Angeles two weeks ago, multi-national software companies said his team had done just that. Mycosm, a 3D version of Facebook, allows users to build their own worlds and share them online to play games, exchange media, make money and socialise with friends.”

7. InformationWeek (USA) – Second Life Tries For A Second Act. “I first joined Second Life in January 2007, near the peak of the hype cycle. Second Life was supposedly the next technology megatrend. It would transform the face of the Internet and make present-day technology obsolete. Then the hype cycle burst. Second Life didn’t change the Internet much. Journalists quit the service en masse to follow the next big trend. But I didn’t leave Second Life. I stuck around. I cut back my professional involvement to an article or blog every few months. But I still spend a few hours a week in Second Life, just playing and keeping in touch with friends.”

8. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Exit reality with 3D web browser. “A total internet revolution is here. That’s according to ExitReality founder Danny Stefanic, who launched his 3D web browser software at Melbourne’s Federation Square today. ExitReality purports to be for 3D internet what Google was for web searches, what You Tube was for video and what MySpace and Facebook were for social networking. Available for free at www.exitreality.com as a four megabyte download, ExitReality operates as a plug-in for existing web browsers. The developers say it was designed with the average computer in mind.”

9. Ars Technica (USA) – Hands on: ExitReality, another useless 3D Internet tool. “Yep, it’s that time again kids. Gather round and hear the story of yet another “we’re giving you the Internet—but in 3D!” product. ExitReality (get it?) is a company based in Melbourne, Australia that apparently isn’t very happy with browsing, searching, and socializing on the web in its current state. Thursday, it released a plug-in named after itself that “allows anyone to view every web page in 3D.” Its ExitReality plug-in is built for IE and Firefox on Windows (though you won’t find any of those details on its barren download page), and also offers 3D search, chat with other users, customizable avatars, social networking, and virtual recreations of real-world destinations.”

10. Silicon.com – Naked CIO: Virtual worlds will disappear. “At a recent golfing outing I found myself paired with a software salesman from a company that develops ‘virtual worlds’. I then reviewed silicon.com to find a CIO Jury, which discussed social networking possibilities within the IT field. Not long ago I also read an article about the CIA developing a social networking virtual world program to allow its employees to share intelligence information in a more proactive fashion.”

Filed Under: General News, Virtual Worlds, Virtual worlds in the media Tagged With:

Immersive Workspaces: the first true corporate virtual world solution?

September 19, 2008 by 1 Comment

Rivers Run Red are one of the larger virtual worlds content developers and in the past month or so they’ve made an announcement that should catch the eye of the corporate sector.

As has been extensively reported over the past two years, there’s been significant corporate interest in Second Life. Over that period there’s been lots of conjecture around the potential for any return on investment on a virtual world presence. One area where returns have been demonstrated is in the collaboration arena. In a direct pitch for that market, Rivers Run Red now offer an ‘Immersive Workspaces’ product. It’s essentially an intranet portal with a difference. On the standard side are typical intranet functionality like shared workspaces, document libraries, group calendars and to-do lists. Integrated within that is access to a Second Life-based grid. I can’t be anymore certain than that, as details are a little sketchy but I’d imagine the infrastructure is set up so that whatever virtual world location can be used, with the appropriate privacy level required by the business. Most intranets run on a permissions-based system and it’s likely the virtual worlds component follows a similar path.

Unilever and Diageo are two early adopters of the platform. After viewing the video of Immersive Workspaces, my gut reaction was that this is the first integrated option that’s likely to gain some traction with business. For me the killer aspect is the auto generation of a code for a document stored on the 2D site – lets say a Powerpoint presentation. Once you click to be logged in-world, you enter that same code to view the presentation. Will it be the most creative use of virtual worlds? Not by a long shot – but applications like this do drive virtual worlds closer to the business mainstream.

What do you think? Can you imagine your business finding this useful?

A big thanks to Tateru Nino at for the heads-up.

Filed Under: Business, General News, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Second Life is my wheelchair.

September 19, 2008 by 8 Comments

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Taupo/171/58/35

There’s all sorts of talk about accessibility, particularly around making computers, the Internet, and online services like Second Life accessible to those who are differently abled. From the chaps in Japan, with their innovative solutions that allow folks with very minimal physical capabilities to use Second Life, to the Imprudence team and Jacek Antonelli – just one of a number of groups looking to improve the accessibility of Second Life clients. Then there’s accessibility specialists who look at Second Life from a legal view (current US law, Section 508 of the Disabilities Act), and thus investigate the content of Second Life. There’s so much focus on how it might be accomplished.

Then someone goes and, distressingly, asks, why? Why should should we put all this effort, money and man-hours into these projects? Surely it’s not worth all the expense?

Let’s examine some of the whys behind the accessibility push.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 17% of the U.S. population, aged 16 and over, lives with some form of disability.

– Kippie Friedkin, 11/09/2008

If the US is representative of much of the world with regards to its Census results, close to 1/5th of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. This equates roughly to a staggering 1.36 billion people across the globe. That’s a huge number of people, all of whom are already at some disadvantage due to their disabilities. They would be disadvantaged further if accommodations are not made for them. Every one of these people has likely experienced some form of discrimination, or one or all aspects of the terrible trio: loneliness, isolation and depression. Because of their disability, these are perhaps the people who stand to benefit the most from the social revolution occurring online, and yet as it stands, they are the ones with the least access to it.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/128/128/23

A wheelchair gives someone with limited mobility to walk, but otherwise functional in the real world, the ability to go out and do things and be a functional member of the community. Because of the nature of my disabilities, a wheelchair is insufficient. However, SL permits me to do things without leaving the protected environment of my home where I have an ergonomic setup that allows for my disabilities.

From my computer chair, I can teach, run a business, have an active social life, and be a functioning member of a community. Second Life is my wheelchair.

– Seshat Czeret, 18/09/2008

Seshat Czeret runs a successful clothing and furniture business in Second Life. She runs classes for the NCI, and is a respected member of their staff. She has several friends whom she is routinely in contact with, and many more people she communicates with regularly. She is an avid roleplayer. All these things would not be possible without access to her high-end computer and broadband connection which enable her to access Second Life.

In the physical world, Seshat suffers from a painful disability which leaves her mostly housebound. She is unable to work away from home, to leave the house for social visits, or to participate in her local community.

For Seshat, a virtual environment is a tool. It’s an extra accessory than allows her new, sometimes unexpected but often welcome, freedoms. It opens up her world. It’s a place where she can be an asset, not a liability.

In another sense, virtual environments are also a good pain management tool. Seshat is able to focus strongly on what she is doing, thereby putting some of her pain aside. If she can be said to “escape” into Second Life, it is not in the sense of “escape into fantasy”, but rather in the sense of “escape from persecution.” It is just the same as focusing on walking, or reading, or gardening, thereby creating a meditative state through focus on an activity.

THE WILDE COLLECTIVE ON CRIMES AND INJUSTICES– MORE THAN OUR SHARE

[“Written by all the members of wilde, but namelessly for their protection and greater transparency”]

most of us, if not all of us, have had things stolen from us, because we were disabled

many of us, if not all of us, have been slapped or abused physically, and several times

all of us have been verbally abused– a lot! which hurts by the way!!

we’ve had our money taken from us

perhaps the greatest pain when our dignity has been taken, stolen.

our humanity, feelings, kicked around and abused

control. people take control. they take control of our things, our decisions. they force their will and preferences upon us. no we cant buy that. no we cant eat that. no we have to watch this. no i dont have time now. no you cant go anywhere. no you will be unable to move for awhile. no…

– wilde Cunningham, 05/12/2004

“The nine souls of wilde Cunningham”, a group of nine adults with cerebral palsy, wrote the piece above in 2004.

The take-away lesson from this piece is that people with disabilities often have control, in every facet of life, taken away from them. Accessibility options are just a small way in which the world can return that control. The option to have new experiences, travel outside your room or residence, socialize with people you wouldn’t usually get to meet, have a job or run a business – suddenly more of these become available to people to whom it matters most poignantly.

In Second Life they are on a equal setting and we don’t see the handicaps.

– Toy LaFollett

Virtual environments which do not show the user’s face nor use voice put more people on an equal footing. What harm is there in ignoring, in failing to display one’s disabilities, when common reactions are those of pity or of prejudice – both of which have a tendency to lead to a lack of control and shame for the disabled individual?

Being in Second Life is how I imagine an innocent man who had been locked up wrongly feels when he is finally set free. In Second Life I get to call the shots.

– John S.

Additional thanks go to Shelley Schlender, for her thought-provoking article.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

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