Second Life is First Class

Over 150 square miles in size ; 3,500 private islands (each 16 acres in real world);  housed on1750 servers; annual GP of about $220 million; daily transactions of $600,000; about 450 residents generating monthly income in access of $1000; home to about 65 new in-world companies with over 350 real full-time employees; resident population growing 36 percent per month; hosting virtual campuses for Ohio University, Penn State, Case Western Reserve, San Jose State…..

If the facts above appear staggering, the potential is far more profound.  Referred to as “inevitable environments”, by Dr. Blake Ives, C.T. Bauer Chair in Business Leadership and Director of the IS Research Center, the virtual world or “metaverse” of Second Life may just be the most seminal networked product of our age.  A 3D online platform that holds immense promise for commerce, services, collaborations within a diverse workforce, training, education and research. 

A skeptic before my conversation with him, I can now appreciate why Second Life has caught the attention, and imagination, of tech giants like IBM, and avid researchers like Dr. Ives.  With over 24 islands and over 3000 employees whose “avatars” routinely conduct business on these islands, IBM is part of a much larger group of corporate and non-profits that are key players in building this “3D Internet”.  Academics are flocking to learn if and how learning spaces and research efforts within such “immersive” environments can offer synergies unknown to the real world.

As I get the first hand tour of “IT World”, an ISRC owned island, which houses Dr. Ives’s virtual offices, and the “second” classroom for his Spring 07 Class, I begin to see that everything in SL is hatched by its users.  The members are creating not only the environment and artifacts around them, but also reinventing themselves by dreaming up their avatars.  The social possibilities are endless – meeting diverse people from around the globe, text chats, voice conversations, building artifacts, taking virtual tours, and more. 

This part-fantasy-part-reality world, created and owned by Linden Labs, owes its financial success to a creative business model. As the user population grows, it creates more “digital real estate”, generating revenues from the sale of this virtual land, referred to as “islands”, stored on thousands of servers in California. When customers “buy” land, they are actually renting space on these servers.  Residents do the rest, by creating, owning and selling their digital creations. Since real estate is inexpensive in SL, it has become a real economy. 

So, will virtual 3D open environments like SL transform the way the “Net generation” interacts with technology, just as the way computers affected the baby boomers as they morphed from machines that lived in rooms to those that now live in your pockets?  Much remains to be learned about this world of unwritten rules and expectations of behavior and culture.  What is the value- add for academia?  Once students overcome the technical and interface issues with SL, will it help bridge the social gap between instructors and students in distance ed classes?  What tools and resources will students need to learn in this space? What are the moral and legal implications of hosting simulated reality/ situated learning experiences?  Does it offer extraordinary opportunities for data collection in social research?  Are they a window into the future for disaster preparedness?  Could in-world behavior undermine an organization’s image/brand in the real world?  Will demands on real life that push folks to virtual worlds, drive the development of breakthrough tools for businesses?  Dr. Ives and his doctoral students are among a select group of active researchers seeking answers through ongoing research and expeditions in their classrooms. 

Stay tuned to future editions of this newsletter, as we follow his fascinating research closely.

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