Social Interaction in SecondLife
This is a reflective post on an experience I had in SecondLife this afternoon.
For all the posts I’ve devoted to the virtual world, all the screenshots and the video clips, I have had very few of what you could call “social conversations” in SecondLife. Virtually all of my previous experiences have been exploratory in nature, conducted with colleagues from my department, or at most observational attendance of in-world presentations (which has only happened twice). The only exception perhaps have been the chats I’ve had with with my best friend from California – but even they have been few and far-between.
This afternoon I met with Lisa Lane, a fellow student from CCK08, at the Connectivism Village, for a social chat and just to catch up. It was a great conversation and I’m grateful to her for the chance to do it. Not only was it nice to meet with another student, whose blogging contributions to the course have been tremendously significant to me; it also enabled me to participate in a side of SecondLife use I hadn’t really experienced yet.
In the wake of this I’d like to explore a couple of ideas about what the experience was like.
From a usage standpoint, the interesting thing I found was that, despite the phenomenal depth of the virtual world, my primary focus during the discussion was on the chat box, and not my surroundings. In fact I couldn’t tell you much about what was going on around me. There was a sense of depth and physical presence – to a degree – but not as pronounced as I had previously expected.
Part of this, I think, was due to the sluggishness of the chat tool. I found entering text to be a tedious experience; even though I type really, really fast. There were times when several seconds passed between when I entered a word in the keyboard and when it finally appeared onscreen. From an accuracy standpoint this made things difficult to maintain, because I couldn’t see my typos for quite some time; and going back to change them wasn’t as easy as using the back arrow, since this adjusted the direction my avatar was pointing.
All of these factors might be resolved by settings in the SecondLife viewer – but the fact remains that, at least in this instance, they distracted from the visual experience that should have been the primary focus during the conversation. There was simply no time to consider gestures, or our surroundings; only to focus on ensuring what we wanted to say was actually what made it into the chat panel.
That said, one obvious solution to this dilemma would be use of audio chat; and at one stage I did just that. In that instance interaction felt far more fluid and comfortable; I could focus on what I was seeing when talking rather than what my fingers were doing. Lisa did not use audio however, and as a result we reverted to text chat after a short period of time. Audio chat definitely seems the easier way to go.
That said though there are issues of comfort to contend with as well. One of the advantages of virtual worlds lay in the anonymity they offer; however audio chat – in its representation of one’s own real voice – is in some regards a step away from anonymity towards a depiction of one’s true self. It also demands real-time delivery, whereas text can be edited, examined, and amended before delivery. So there is a greater sense of exposure when communicating via audio than there is with text.
On the other hand, the physical component – albeit a virtual one – was significant in a couple of key ways. I’ve interacted with Lisa on many occasions via comments on her blog as well as chat during our weekly Elluminate meetings, however this has always revolved around a purely textual experience. The introduction of avatars resulted in a far greater sense of human presence than had ever existed before. Additionally, whereas text is very limiting in its ability to convey non-verbal communication, an avatar in SecondLife can go a great deal farther to implying personal characteristics – particularly with regards to how the avatar is dressed, along with their physical characteristics.
Avatars don’t necessarily reflect identical representations of the individual of course; but nonetheless it can still provide insight into the personality of the individual, since design sense can suggest the presence of certain traits or characteristics.
One thing was made very clear in this experience, you cannot gain a proper appreciation for what SecondLife is like – and therefore its value and corresponding opportunities – without first interacting with others and embracing the social aspects of the virtual world.
Thanks again, Lisa!
