Whew...just got back from a trip to Second Life, and what a trip it was!!...okay, way back when, a couple years ago, I had set up an account there but found that this computer, with a slow Internet connection caused my avatar to glow green, and not move around too fast so I quit and gave up on the place...but now--mainly because of 23 Things No. 15.-- I forced myself to try again...and what a big difference!...using the same computer and connection speed (only 730 K) everything now seems just right...avatar never looked so good, and walking, as well as flying ability is right up there with Superman levels...the only thing that changed to me is that Second Life made me update to their new version, which really has improved things, even with the same computer---they must have fixed the bugs and capabilities over the past two years or so, and now I can recommend that probably most computers should work fairly well with this intensive on-line streaming graphic site....
My report on this virtual world is first, of course, there is quite a learning curve to go through to be able to figure out what is going on, and really, I don't have the patience to first read all the FAQs and such, but later when I did, they were not very helpful in answering my main question which way how do I find out where to go, and how do I get there?...fortunately, if you get your avatar at least walking around in the virtual world you might meet another avatar that will help you---and that's even more fun than studying up on Second Life info screens. Just get into the world and you will figure things out as you progress, with virtual people helping you...at least, that's what happened to me...
But this is only in Help Island or in some other beginners place on the site, where people are lurking around...most of the time, the Second Life world is very lonely; you will think you have landed on a forsaken and eerie planet that people had deserted years ago, but now you have landed to explore what they left behind after their rush to leave...beware that this can be a very nervous and spooky experience at some of the SL areas where whispering winds or strange sounds are heard in the background as you gingerly stroll through a completely empty, incredible huge atrium, or some other seemingly deserted cityscape, all by your lonesome self! But then, just around that marble pillar, you bump into another lonely avatar thing, and you dare to speak! What fun...they talk back and now you have made a friend!! One of these virtual people even gave me, out of the blue, $100 Linden Money or something like that, which she said I should use to buy myself new clothes (strangely similar to what once was said to me in real life, except then I had to use my own money).
Well, after transporting (by accident, huh?) to some very interesting and educational "adult" sites which seem to be all over the place, I thought I should instead try to travel somewhere more relevant to libraries..so I managed to get myself transported to the Ohio Libraries area in Second Life which was one of the links I had examined in the 23 Things blog...
Very impressive and well-done there I thought, except also very lonely and empty of people, probably not quite like the scene at the real Ohio University campus....interesting to me, however, and just a thought that entered my mind at the time, that they had constructed the place to look almost exactly the way it probably looks in real life...in fact, it had those traditional looking buildings, and quad areas you would expect to see in the real world...but I kept thinking, that I would rather go to the real one rather than this virtual representation (even if it did have less lines at the info desk)---so it seems, even when you can build any type of university you want, and without any restriction of money or real-world restraints, people still build the same kind of boring buildings, and bureaucratic-looking environments they are familiar with...sort of defeating the purpose of a virtual world where you can do things outside of ordinary limitations. And so, Second Life and any other virtual world, still it seems to me has the real world limitations of human imagination, and no virtual world can guarenttee overcoming that...at least, so far...something libraries going in this virtual direction might keep in mind...
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