Week 8 - Part 2: Entering The World Of The Unknown

A crappy comparison of Second Life (3D) and MSN Messenger (2D) written by a naive and inexperienced user of 3D worlds! Bet you can't wait to read on!

Ever since we watched the Episode of 4 corners about Second Life, I have had a negative outlook on 3D worlds. This may be because I haven't had enough personal experience with them, maybe because Im narrow minded, or maybe because I dont like change - probably a combination of all three. The people who spoke on the show seemed like crazy geeks who need to find A life before they try and get a second one.

So for this weeks task, we were asked to get some first hand experience in a 3D cyber world... Second Life was the one I chose. Although I thought it was all very preeeetttyyy, after roaming around for a bit and trying to have weird/meaningless/awkward conversations with random people, i got over the novelty of 3D pretty quickly.

I still think 2D chat, MSN in particular, is much more beneficial for users LIKE ME, and I have a good reason for making this claim! I use the internet for 2 things: to research or find info and to allow myself unlimited social interaction with my friends that I don't have to pay for. This alone takes up way too much time in my life, so I can't see the point in wasting time on meeting strangers on the net when I know nothing about them, I cant be sure if they're telling me the truth about themselves or lying, and our conversations are never straight to the point - theres alot of beating around the bush so nothing is achieved quickly. MSN is convenient and I only have people on my contact list who I know. Their are many benefits of MSN - like right now I'm studying with a friend via MSN, discussing and sharing our notes! Hooray!

However, I do want to note that I said MSN is more beneficial for users LIKE ME because I do beleive 3D worlds have their place. Whilst researching for my essay for this subject, I read a number of stories about people who use 3D worlds to interact with others because they find doing so in real life very hard. I think these worlds have a lot of potential to do great things but only time will tell what we make of them!