mazar.ca

So Valleywag has put Second Life on deathwatch. I was sort of intrigued when I heard about this, because I thought they might have something interesting to say. Instead it contains some jabs about how it’s all digital dancing and sex, and then suggesting that linden labs saw SL as a kind of “online schoolhouse”. As usual, those with lots of cynicism and precious little imagination wait until someone tells them what a technology is for, and then merely attempts to half-heartedly evaluate how well that goal is met from their own rather jaded perspective.

While they’re claiming SL is dying, the population seems to have grown rather dramatically in the last few months. I used to see the logged in population sitting somewhere between 42 and 56K, where now it’s rarely below 72K. Just yesterday I was part of a panel of cancer survivors in Second Life talking about the impact of having a survivor community in world; of course I pointed out my own means of expressing myself in Second Life, my Cancerland build, and how the community helped shape it and me through their support and feedback. Others talked about finally being allowed to speak out loud about what they’re going through without having to shape their words based on the feelings of devastated friends and family who only want to see a happy, positive cancer patient. (This same topic was covered in the current issue of Harvard Divinity Bulletin in Mark U. Edwards’ Ways of ‘Knowing’ Cancer: How can we reason about illness?.) We talked about the impact of running in the Relay for Life without having to have the physical strength to do so.

While I quite like the idea of Linden Labs being bought out by an academic consortium, that hardly seems likely.

Having been so deeply impressed by the Second Life article, I nipped over to see what they had to say about twitter. They quote folks saying that twitter is for the insecure seeking out an identity, which I find quite bizarre. I wonder if they say that about everyone who puts their words or work into the public eye, like, say, journalists, novelists, or artists. Not that tweets are novels or art, per se, but I find the rationale behind their judgment quite baffling. Have they never heard of the value of presence awareness? Do they not understand that connection can be reached both through depth of contact and through regular, small acts of communication? Do they not have singular ideas throughout the day, short ones, that bear sharing and storing?

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: nothing frustrates me more than the “what is it for” argument, which appears to be at the heart of both of these articles. It seems perfectly fair to ask someone who’s a fan of, say, Twitter or Second Life: “What’s it for?” but I suggest that it’s not a fair question at all. “What do you use it for,” perhaps. “What’s its appeal to you,” definitely. But “What’s it for?” is just a way to mark yourself as someone with no imagination, no critical faculty, and no interest in the actual answer. “I don’t see an application for this in my current life/online practice,” is just fine. I wouldn’t debate that. Everyone finds niches for things. But to ask other people to find a niche for something in your life, well. That’s lazy, in my opinion.

Not all ideas or applications work for all people. I can understand why del.icio.us is a great thing to many people, but I’m not really a link collector, so I don’t use it. It’s affordances don’t have a particularly important niche in my life. And that doesn’t mean it’s a useless application, it’s just not that useful to me. I have great respect for the gaming industry, and even have friends who work within it, but I don’t play games other than solitaire and boomshine. I can’t handle the stress. That doesn’t mean I think gaming is pointless. The mixture of personality, imagination, and technology is fascinating and rich; we each carve out our own ways to manage it. If you don’t want to do this, that’s fine; but don’t tell me it’s because there’s something wrong with me, or something wrong with the technology. Turn your high-powered lens of personality probing back on yourself.

What’s so funny about these tirades is that once someone else (with vision and imagination) demonstrates a use for a given application, suddenly those same people who complain loudly about it’s uselessness suddenly become fans. Remember the early days of blogging when everyone told us how bloody pointless and self-indulgent that was? Who doesn’t have a blog these days?

I know, I should get a better sense of humour. But this stuff really grates on me.