This chapter was interesting to me because the author went onto detail about building and what the terms mean. He talked about “prims” and “objects” and “rezzing.” I found this section intersting because I was exploring the build features for the first time on second life the other day in class. This chapter put things into better perspective for me when it comes to second life and land, building, creating and using objects. The author mentioned how programs called scripts are used or placed in an object (prim) and those are the things that allow avatars to do stuff. Some examples from the book were: scripts can be use to make water flow, or a script can be the program that allows an avatar to be a blackjack dealer at a blackjack table. Also prims are the shapes in which people build things with. You can morph these shapes, add more shapes, do whatever to them and create just about anything. I made a small bar and a couple stools the other day when I was fooling around with some prims. The chapter discusses how “builds” are simply buildings attached to the ground and objects are not (like cars, clothing, etc.) The author also gets into detail about rezzing and lag. Basically the author was pointing out that the more prims in a certain area the more your computer has to process to download them. The more prims in an area, the slower, or more lag your computer and avatar will have.
In the first section of the chapter, the author talks about an incident where a large store that was very flashy with lights was disrupting a neighboring establishment (A romatic club of some sort). The store was called Zazzy’s and the owner of the store built the store all the way to the property line. A friend of the author on second life told the owner to go away and questioned him about his antics. I found this interesting because it really shows how serious people can get in second life. It shows that even property and space is a need of people in a virtual world. This kind of conflict could also happen in reality. To me, it makes second life seem more real or more organized in a sense. When I say organized I mean that people will speak up if they are unhappy with how one is doing things in a virtual world. It’s not a chaotic place, it seems like there is some sort of order, and if someone gets out of order, they will hear about it or get scrutinized, etc. People in second life, or in the case of Zazzy’s, expect other avatars to be considerate. This is something we expect in real life as well. This is all kind of hard for me to explain but I hope you get what I’m trying to say.