It seems that it’s become very popular in Denmark to criticize Second Life. Especially people known to be experts in the new media business are giving it the axe.
- “The internet sort of brings ppl in the world together. SL does quite the opposite”, I heard a guy say.
- “Ppl are not even fully familiar with web 1.0 informationarchitecture and RL-usability yet. SL is way to early and too full of flaws still to survive anything”, another guy said.
- “SL is nothing but dating, Roleplaying soaps and poor surrogate porn”, a third expert judged.
But has virtual worlds really no future as an appendix to RL (real life)?
I briefly met Regis Braathens, the Editor-in-Chief of the SL tabloid ‘The AvaStar‘. He is not that sceptic, though he has to admit SL has some serious flaws still:
“SL is a test laboratory for the future internet and not the future in itself,” he told me.
“There is too many problems that I can’t see SL turning around in order to for it to be able to become a mass portal in the future. The main problem is, that it takes the average person 4 hours to understand SL. That has to drop to half an hour, in order for SL to become a mass portal.”
I think maybe Regis is right. On the question “What is SL?” I used to answer: “A sort of internet you can walk into”. I was mocked terribly for that remark. So now I just shut up when asked. It’s not a new internet… yet!!!
But, I wonder what other people think about this? What will we demand from a future more virtual internet?
