SecondLife and the Enhanced You

I attended an interesting presentation on SecondLife (also called SL) entitled "Is there life after SecondLife - Pouring New Wine into Old Bottles" by Geoffrey Edwards at Monash University Behavioural Studies yesterday. Some of the points he made (and I am paraphrasing from a mediocre memory)..

There is a distinction between the body-as-source-of-organic-experience (BaSoOE) and the body-as-performer (BaP) in SecondLife. But the body-as-performer can give back to the organic body. Shift its self concept somewhat. I.E. create new wine (new identity) to put back into an old body.

One of the things that makes this possible is that SecondLife has certain "affordances" available to the BaP. An affordance, in his presentation, was a relationship between the body and the environment. It isn't in the body nor is it part of the environment. He gave some examples of SecondLife affordances:

• The ability to alter your surrounding environment
• The ability to examine the world from a viewpoint that is semi-independent of the body
• The ability to change your physical appearance and avatar
• The ability to change your species or gender and thereby changing others expectations of you
• The ability to have multiple virtual identities (either by changing our avatar or an alt)
• The ability to act and communicate with no fear for our safety
• The ability to acquire new skills that require a great deal of learning or are impossible in real life (such as learning to dance the tango, fly, or do tai chi)

He went on to say that our sense of identity is a function of the "cross product" between the BaP and the BaSoOE. These affordances (and I'm inferring now - not relaying his content) allow us to make discoveries about ourselves, to find what is the essence of us in such an environment.

The presenter had designed clothes in SL and enjoyed it so much when he went back to RL, he learned to sew and to design clothes (I stifled myself from commenting on seeing SL clothes in RL). The point is he found something satisfying in a virtual world that he took back to his real life.

Many people in SL are using it in ways that, to me, are simply another way to pass time. If they weren't going "woot" at a party, they would be watching a DVD. These folks have the right to express themselves in this way.

Others, are using the affordances of SecondLife to overcome limitations that real life (which can be extraordinarily uneven in it's endowments) has handed them.

Of those people some essentially never come back to RL. Not sure why they should if they are truly content in-world. Some however, like the presenter, take the growth experience return to RL and remake themselves incorporating the things learned in SecondLife.

I think this is an excellent application of the technology that so many struggle to understand. Understanding the opportunities is a step toward using them productively.