Second Life: A First Life Disruption?

“Second Life” is a disruptive technology in that it has the potential to replace direct connections between individual human beings. These include, but should not be limited to, the telephone, texting, teleconferencing, instant messaging, and actual f2f conversations. As a professional educator, I can see the potential for Second Life to replace the traditional classroom, and even distance learning, with a digital version that is experienced in the artificial world created within the computer network. Education would take on a whole new personality, with experiments about space travel actually being conducted in space, including the physics of space travel, planetary colonization, and the effects of long term weightless environments, just to name a few. Conversations with people from the other side of the planet could take place f2f virtually, with translation programs taking care of the participants’ original languages. This would mean that entire cultures could be sampled without leaving the security and comfort of one’s own home. Many of the planet’s present problems may be resolved within this medium, including armed conflicts, hunger, territorial disputes, and economic and trade difficulties.

There is, of course, a darker side to this situation, in that people will become further isolated and insulated from one another as the digital world becomes bigger and more real/important than actual flesh and blood living. Care should be taken that this situation does not escalate to the levels prophesied by some writers of science fiction, who have predicted a society where no one leaves there home and everything is automated and actuated through the digital world.

It may be that “Second Life” continues to grow in its present state, at its present rate, without becoming too disruptive toward other technologies too quickly. But there is the “wildcard effect” that means this application may take off and start replacing multiple technologies and involving more people on a grander scale. With the way technology and communication are expanding and steadily including more of our global community on an ongoing basis, I can see that this program may have a very long life. On the other hand, that same “wildcard effect” may occur and replace this artificial world with something completely different at any time. This is the element that makes technology so interesting to work with: the notion that something new and different may appear at any time and replace multiple elements of the present day society and culture.