What's the Purpose?

An article by Mitch Wagner at Information Week a while back got me to thinking: what's the purpose to SL? People are joining the community at a farly fast clip, but once they have joined, then what? Mitch's article attempted to deal with that question from the user's perspective by listing 12 things to do, but I think he missed the larger issue. What's the purpose of Second Life? So let's consider what's possible.

To judge by the results of a few cursory searches, there's a lot of sex going on in Second Life. Some of you may be too young to remember the cybersex craze a few years back. If you missed it, think of it as a lot of one-handed typing (which might lead to a good pun on "sticky keys," but let's not go there). To be fair, Second Life takes it a bit farther by giving the user something look at besides lines of text on the screen, but still...

I'm not trying to denigrate anyone who might be into that sort of thing. I'm a bit of a 70s throwback - if it feels good and doesn't hurt anyone else, go for it. But there must be more to it than watching some avatars do the nasty. My personal take on it is that the participants are either getting something that they cannot get in real life or they are exploring aspects of their personality that they might otherwise repress in real life for fear of repercussions. Second Life, like almost anything on the Internet, affords a degree of anonymity that is not available in real life (for a good look at how anonymous you really are in Second Life, consider the Identify and Anonymity section of Mitch's interview with Phillip Rosedale from last week). So people can indulge their fantasies with little feal of real world consequences. This raises a whole slew of ethical questions that are far outside the point of this whole ramble, so I'll let it drop for now. Perhaps I'll come back to those in another entry, perhaps not.

There is also a lot of money-making going on. Well, money-making of a sort. If you consider April's economic activity, the vast majority of transations were for less than L$1000 (a bit more than four bucks (US$)), and perhaps half of the transactions were for less than L$20 (less than a dime). Now keep in mind that these transactions are only for Lindens. If someone goes off-grid to transact in real money, there would be no way to keep track of that in-world. So if most sellers are collecting less than $.10 per transaction, whatever they are doing must be because they enjoy it, not because they're expecting to become the next Second Life billionaire. The money is gravy rather than the primary motivator. On the other hand, a lot of $0.10 transactions can add up over time. And if you think about it, there are few material costs involved - just skill and creativity (which kind of goes back to my previous post), so perhaps they are thinking volume?

To pick up on Mitch's #2 activity, people chat. A lot. I was tangentally discussing this with a couple of friends last night (maybe the night before) at Philosophy House.  A point that I raised in the discussion was that I would have had to scour the entire town to come up with even a couple of people who could discuss philosophy intelligently and at Philosophy House there are a good dozen or more who show up on a regular basis. I didn't have to do any scouring - there they are, all gathered together in a single place at the same time. I think it is the one area where Second Life excels: the capability to gather people who share similar interests who can share those interests in real-time. I don't think any of the discussions have changed my viewpoints on most matters, but the exchange of differing viewpoints in a civilized manner is the best part. I may not agree with others' views, but the mere communication of a differeing view is enough to make me sit back and go "Hmmmm." And in my book, that's the most important part: the expanded view.

Many years back, British science historian James Burke made a comment in one of his history serials (I forget whether it was "Connections" or "The Day the Universe Changed"). Acording to Burke, one idea plus one idea doesn't equal two ideas; it equals three or more depending upon how good the original ideas were. And that is Second Life's strongest asset - the ability to draw people together and have them share ideas. Whether anyone makes money off of it is completely secondary to the original exchange of ideas.