Second Life: The Uncomfortable Truth
Many of you may be familiar with the virtual reality of second life, the online virtual world where an individual can live an alternative life in the safety of cyber-space, creating many diverse and intriguing experiences whilst interacting with the pseudo-personalities of thousands of other people.
The popularity of this phenomena offers an uncomfortable truth, and its creators appear to have an acute understanding of the primary challenge facing most of the global population. Whilst I’m sure a certain percentage of patrons using Second Life do so as an amusing pastime, I wonder how many are finding their ‘fix’ of escapism , avoiding the reality of their first life, the real one.
The disturbing truth is that many Second Life users will expend far more time thinking and planning the ideal life for their cyber – personality than they’d ever consider for their real existence. The person who brought Second Life into my awareness (I’m more ‘technonotice’ than a technophobe) excitedly told me “just imagine if you could do this kind of thing in real life”. And there’s the point, you can, and if you make it your business to study success, you’ll find ,without exception, that is exactly the habit of those who achieve extraordinary results in the real world.
Consider the real currency of life for one moment. The only asset of any value that we inexorably spend and cannot earn is time. How tragic it is that many people spend the majority of this precious commodity in jobs/relationships/activities that have little or no meaning to them. Whilst tragic, it is a symptom of nurture, the way we’ve been raised and conditioned to operate. The authority figures in our lives (parents, teachers, leaders) often had the best intentions, yet they too were raised in a manner ignorant to self- knowledge and the science of success.
The traditional educational system hardly addresses the issue. Self-leadership is not a subject found on a curriculum that is predominantly unfit for purpose, structured as nothing more than an exercise in the memorisation of data, most of which has little relevance to success in life and business. It’s little wonder why we have universities full of people purposely extending their academic years whilst waiting for that light bulb moment that establishes purpose and direction. Establishing purpose takes introspection and thought, the latter being the highest function of which the human being is capable and a subject despicably missing from traditional and business education. The quality of a person’s life is always in direct proportion to the quality of intelligent questions they ask themselves.
star wars the clone wars dvd download Second Life offers a virtual fix of escapism, a disturbingly popular medium for living ‘life’ to the full for those people lacking the necessary awareness to create what they want in reality. If those people replicated the same level of enthusiasm for success in the real world as they do for this pseudo-existence, the creators of Second Life would be plying their skills elsewhere.
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June 27th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
This article takes on a shallow view of the virtual world. True some people go into virtual worlds to escape - in fact there are plenty of places to do that: the movies, literature, the radio, the television. They all provide escape from reality into worlds of pleasure, information and catharsis. But they’re not interactive. They push experience not engage you in the experience. Second Life is the definition of space in the 21st century where meaningful experience can be had. SL allows us to accelerate contact and interaction with others. It allows us to move photons, rather than people to conduct business, study in universities, interact with colleagues and professionals worldwide, and design context for meaning. Second Life extends the power of software, with more silicon, there is less carbon. So the economic and environmental issues are clear. Combine this benefit with the potential of co-creating content colleagues in settings that resemble the inside of a cell, or the circulatory system and you develop an intellectual experience that allows human minds to touch other human minds over invisible distances. The interactivity levels go up, and the insights accelerate. I don’t see this level of interaction in a university classroom where everyone is forced to listen to just one person talk at a time. This is why they miss their aha moment. They don’t have a venue for reflection. I’d rather learn genetics on an island in Second Life where I can build DNA, conduct experiments with remote sensors, discuss activities with students and faculty from any university, and leverage the power of the Internet for research. Sure, I’ll escape to dance on an imaginary Italian Riveria with my wife in between my intellectual pursuits. But in my humble view, I’m getting deep human experiences for the price of access to the Internet. I can’t afford to fly to Italy every night I want to dance, nor can I afford to fly to seven different universities to chat with peers. I can make these discoveries in a world where I can see someone in their surroundings, inviting me to engage in conversation — the one most significant tool we have to arrive at comfortable truths.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
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