Semiotics in Second Life

In class on Wednesday we put of topics for studying second life to the test. My group had semiotics, we basically just took pictures of interesting/different things (mostly people). It was weird to think about after the fact because before we took part in the study we were warned that some other avatars might not like having their picture taken when in second life and could get mad. At first i was thinking that was dumb of them, that its just a little virtual world and really just one animated person taking a picture of the other. After reading and thinking about chapter 3 in “coming of age in second life” however, if you think of it in terms of “actual” reality; how would i feel if i was shopping at the mall or walking on campus and someone can up and took a picture of me out of nowhere for their own research purposes..creeped out.  I understand that there are little things like that on second life that needs to be taken into consideration because for some people, they take their virtual world seriously and taking a snapshot of them and emailing it to oneself could be intrusive in their opinion. I did have fun taking pictures of the scenery and stuff around the different worlds of second life. There are just so many weird and interesting things to see. I tried teleporting to other worlds, I typed in “Hollywood” and it looked like i was in some kind of ghost town-no other avatars or really anything but me for that matter and it was dark out. I was able to get to the Sunset Strip in Hollywood so my avatar could do some shopping, and there were other avatars and shops there (not like the freebie shops unfortunetly) but it was still dark out..that confused me!! I looke forward to teleporting to other second life worlds and comparing the lifestyles to one another.

Add comment September 22, 2008

Class notes 9/12

-Cave paintings considered virtual

        *symbols open up the possibilities of other worlds

-escape from our situated reality 

         *playing pretend as a kid (dress up, house)

         * clearly embodied virtuality

-communication isn’t just verbal

-he considers writing virtual

-real aspects of actual worlds (virtual life) time, space, place.

      *space-cultural, interactional

      *time-real, synchrinized

      * place- not necessarily literally where you are, atmosphere, tangible items

-The Truman Show

-Setting up the framework

     *talking on the phone

     * going online

     *Second Life

(not considered to be real?)

-reality is about shared meaning

Add comment September 12, 2008

More reactions to Second Life..

In class on Friday we had an open discussion of everyone’s feelings towards Second Life..it seemed that in general everyone agreed. From what i gathered most of us have never experienced anything like this so it’s all pretty weird to us. The list we came up with as a class about our reactions to Second Life was pretty accurate to how i see it as of right now. I think it’s crazy how serious people take it..like whenw e discussed in class how Second Life characters had a wedding a paid a ridiculous amount of money for it, that just blows my mind! It’s crazy how they are considered certifyably (is that a word?) married in the yes of the law. My initial reaction was, don’t they have anything better to do with their time/money?? Honestly though once I thought about maybe they don’t, and this might actually be one of their interests and something that makes them happy, so who am I to judge that. I think as the class goes as a whole we may all become more open-minded about Second Life and some of the strange things we see on it and hear about.

Add comment September 10, 2008