Topic:
For my final project in English 103, I will explore the implications that arise by calling Second Life a virtual "world," and whether or not this is the correct term for Second Life. The term "world" comes with a set of very defined boundaries which in many ways shut it off from other "worlds" or places in space. Perhaps Second Life is not confined to these boundaries, but rather has ever expanding set of boundaries such as the "universe" or "cosmos". Maybe it is not as expansive as a "universe" but is not as constricted as a "world" and is instead something in between, something with a loosely defined set of boundaries that are easily persuaded to change in size such as a "solar system" or a "galaxy".
I have no initial bias in terms of which category Second Life exactly fits into, other than it probably is greater than a "world". I believe that by calling Second Life a virtual "world" people's ideas of possibilities with the software are immediately limited compared to if it were called a "virtual universe". I am, however, unsure as to which of the other categories - the building blocks of the cosmos, or the cosmos itself - Second Life fits into.
Works Cited
Humboldt, Alexander Von. Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe (Foundations of Natural History). New York: Harper & Brothers, 1850.
I need a concrete idea of what the building pieces of the universe are, and this book seems to provide it.
Koyre, Alexandre. From the closed world to the infinite universe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957.
I think this book will help because even from the title it is obvious that a "world" is "closed" and a "universe" is "infinite".
Kragh, Helge. Conceptions of Cosmos: From Myths to the Accelerating Universe: A History of Cosmology. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.
This book will help with my final project because it starts basic,with the origin of the word "cosmos" and implies and explains the connotations that come with the term, and works its way up to how the universe functions.
White, Brian A. Second Life (R): A Guide to Your Virtual World. Indianapolis: Que, 2007.
Even though I have been using Second Life for a little while now, there is still plenty to learn and I think having another good guide would be good to reference. This book talks a lot about the "geography" of Second Life, something which I believe to be important when trying to fit a category to it.
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Comments (5)
antoine.waul@richmond.edu said
at 3:50 pm on Oct 29, 2009
Your topic sounds really interesting; it will make a great paper. What other kind of research will you be able to do? How would you prove your thesis using in world evidence? Could you talk to other avatars about what they think to help discover or bolster your claim? I'm sure your paper will be pretty awesome and really interesting. I would probably read it even if I weren't in your editing group. Good luck.
Joe Essid said
at 2:38 pm on Nov 3, 2009
I'd contact Jon Himoff of Rezzable with a polite e-mail, introducing yourself and asking him to elaborate on why he dislike the term "virtual world."
And you'll be on his radar as a smart college kid at the edges of communications technology. Rule one of college, right after "develop an intellectual passion": network, network, network.
The way the architecture of SL is set up interests me--all the servers are always on. That's not the case for Metaplace, a Web-based world developed by Raph Koster's team (Raph was a Sony VP for Creativity...such a cool title). For Raph's project (easy to learn, at http://www.metaplace.com) the parts of Metaplace that are empty turn themselves off when they are not occupied. You teleport from one "world" to another. So the metaphor here seems to be "virtual cosmos" or "solar system." Metaplace also runs in a browser without any special client.
Check out Wagner James Au's The Making of Second Life, for its history of how Linden Lab developed its virtual world.
Joe Essid said
at 3:02 pm on Nov 3, 2009
I sent you a Metaplace invitation to your Richmond address. It's rather like the arcade games of the 80s-today, but created by users, not Raph and his follks.
It's mostly mindless fun, but it's cute in the same way Super Mario was cute. The community it sponsors is small but avid, but the clever ways one moves around from world to world make it very different from SL.
antoine.waul@richmond.edu said
at 5:16 pm on Nov 5, 2009
The term "world" comes with a set of very defined boundaries which in many ways shut it off from other "worlds" or places in space.
1. A world is very confined
2. Worlds are also very closed places
3. "Comes with" infers that it is only attached to a world
4. "shut off" completely closed to the outside
5. "boundaries" infer that it can be crossed
This claim leads me to believe that worlds are confined environments but the limits can be crossed.
Joe Essid said
at 6:20 pm on Nov 7, 2009
Nice 5-on-1 analysis. I think it's my literary background, but I keep seeing "world" as a metaphor for a self-contained place. I have spoken of "the world of Charles Dickens' London," for instance. I hope that the article from Journal of Virtual Worlds Research helps define VW in a way that lets Ian consider if SL is a world, a universe of worlds, or a world in a metaphorical sense.
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