Spinning the wheel
Two years of Second Life, two years… Sometimes it feels like a whole life, time into Second Life has some kind of distortion and seems to run much faster than in RL, maybe because is a really dynamic world, always changing.
In this two years i learned a lot, not only about the use of the Client, i learned specially about myself and about human being. I learned about other cultures and points of view, about what’s important for me and for others.
Saw technical evolution of Second Life. When i first logged in “flexible prims” were quite a new thing, i saw the birth of “sculpted prims”, of Windlight, the birth (and death) of cheap OpenSpace sims. Lived really bad performance times, and better ones too. Saw the evolution of “SLFlickr”, of all the social networks related or that we connect with Second Life, like Twitter, Plurk, Koinup, …
Meet wonderful people, creative people, dorks, slaves, animals, men who are a woman, women who are a man, alts, masters, Lindens, dancing bananas… well a really wide rainbow of people. Saw their creations, felt amazed by them. I loved, played, had fun and get bored.
After this two years, after living all that, i still think i don’t know nothing and have everything to do and to learn. After two years i still think the wheel must keep spinning.
Image in the post by Andromega Volare, published under a Creative Commons license.
Augmentation or Immersion
Looking around the blogs and “wikis” related to Second Life I found an interesting page talking about Immersion and Augmentation, as philosophical concepts of our metaverse. And that made me thought… Am I an Immersionist or an Augmentationist? I’ll try to be as objective as i could.
This “philosophical issue” has existed in Second Life forever, since the early days, maybe is even part of the metaverse itself.
The definition of Immersion in that page is:
“… The immersion view is that SL is its own thing and should not be contaminated by anything from the outside. Many people in SL will bring up the metaverse. This term and a notion self contained internet worlds were introduced in Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash. [Stephenson, 2002] Since the early these sci-fi worlds has been repeatedly mentioned as the inspiration for SL. Residents that subscribe to this belief often feel that SL should evolve at its own pace as we continue to gain a deeper understanding of how our metaverse should and could look. …”
Immersion vs. Augmentation by Henrik Bennetsen.
Immersion also means that your SL and RL identities are different sides of you and shouldn’t be mixed, this way you can be free to live your Second Life (quite an immersionist name) in a way you may not feel able to do in your first life, so this concept includes a role playing component. Immersionist residents don’t use the 1st Life tab in his profile, or use it in a way they don’t give information about his real life.
This concept defends also the “sanctity” of the metaverse, so any external influence (RL corporations, for example) or any change that could affect the resident “immersion” level (as Voice Chat) will be conceived as a potential aggression. The “government” (Linden Lab) will be asked to protect this sanctity. If is the “government” who is producing or facilitating that “aggressions” then the protest against Linden Lab will be big and hard through different channels (forums, blogs, Flickr, …). Immersionist are not against a market in SL, but prefer to keep it inside SL, residents creating objects and/or services and selling them directly to other residents, again, no external influence.
Augmentation considers we have to stop thinking SL and RL as different spaces. SL is just an extension of the real life, so is a part of it. Second Life is, for augmentationist, just an Internet application (maybe a future Web 3.0?). Something, not somewhere. A tool to work, interact, meet, and even create, but create as you can create a web page or a web 2.0 application. In this case the SL and RL persona are the same, openly. This option is specially followed by the “professionals” of Second Life, production companies as Electric Sheep Company and some particulars, when you are moving big money you need to know who are you dealing with. Also is usual to consider the avatar as a brand, in the sense is the representation and the image of a business.
Of course there are conflicts between this two positions, one is “idealistic”, the other is “realistic”, impossible to make them compatible at the same time. Even the Augmentation theory is more recent, it has been growing in the last years, and some new features of the platform, like Voice Chat, were something applauded by the Augmentationists and refused by the Immersionists.
OK… now, where i am? What is my position about this? After being for a while thinking about it, looking at the Linden ocean through the window of my bedroom i think i have a conclusion, or something like that: I’m almost an Immersionist, but that’s the point… “almost”.
In Second Life, in my blog, in Flickr, even in my business, I’m Raul Crimson, an SL persona, that’s all. Anyway Raul Crimson is so me as my RL “avatar”, so he is just myself. Anyway, with the people who I trust or feel comfortable I don’t need to hide my RL persona. Also i can use voice openly, anyway i don’t do it always because English is not my first language and is easier sometimes for me to communicate typing and reading than speaking and listening.
I think also i prefer the Immersion because the romanticism implied in it (…you may saaay i’m a dreamer….. but i’m not the only one… 
), anyway i understand and even share sometimes the augmentationist ideas.
If there are place for both philosophies in me, then sure is place for both philosophies in our metaverse.
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