Module 3: Rhymes of History Technology - Second Life

Since the beginning of time, man has always longed to go to far away places to experience something that life currently could not provide.  The stories of these journeys are what tall tales and bedtime stories are made of.  With the advent of books, these stories were able to be recorded and shared with millions of people all around the world.  The theatre was a place where these stories could be told and acted out, making the audience feel like they were a part of the story, experiencing it for themselves.  In the mid to late 20th century, computer games were developed that let the users actively participate in playing games and entering virtual environments that were not scripted out, and the numbers of outcomes could be endless.

Second Life is a rhyme of history that brings the user into a world where he or she is connected with other real people taking a journey and experiencing the same virtual reality.  Kevin Kelly on the Next 500 Days of the Web describes how the future of the web is going to be a place where everything is connected.  He hypothesized that every piece of data will be shared on the web.  We are going to be in the middle of the web and everything is going to be connected, just like in Second Life.  We are going to be codependent with the web.  Total personalization will equal total transparency.  We are going to be the web.  We are going to be the machine.  It’s going to be smarter.  It will anticipate what we are going to do.  It is going to become more ubiquitous with us in the middle of it with all devices as portals to it.   The web is going to become a global stage and a more reliable machine.


Kelly's concepts of embodiment, restructuring, and codependency can be found in the rhymes of history example of Second Life.  Everything that is created in the virtual world of second life never represents just one thing - it is an embodiment of all of the connections that the users and interface has created.  The entire virtual community is continually being restructures to support the one complex world that is codependent on everything inside of it.




Reference


Kelly, K. (2007, December). Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the Web[Speech]. Speech delivered at the EG 2007 Conference, Los Angeles. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html