Lake Gnoma - Second Lifeby Joseph Hocking 2006 |
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Starting in late August 2006, I have been participating in the online virtual community Second Life. I began by creating short animations to sell in a vending stall, and have rapidly expanded to an entire lake with outdoors activities for visitors. Exploration of Second Life has been very interesting and informative, both in terms of the emerging VR community as well as educational opportunities relating back to the real world.
Second Life consists of a large grid of land sections connected together, with different people around the world owning that land, building content, and interacting with each other in an interactive 3D environment. The lake, called Lake Gnoma, is located on a section of land collectively owned by several different people. Although most of the neighboring landowners have built dense homes and shopping areas, as is visible in the screenshots, the plan for Lake Gnoma is a relatively open campground, to provide a serene destination for visitors to go canoeing or fishing.
 Besides building a large-scale destination, I am involved in the commercial side of Second Life. In particular, I have built a store and am actively engaged in the market economy by selling animations to customers. Being a merchant, developing and maintaining a store, has been both emotionally fulfilling and unexpectedly educational. In addition to practicing digital art skills through application of 3D modeling, texturing, and animation knowledge, a great deal of knowledge about how to market digital content is gleaned by operating a store in Second Life. There are a number of real-life educational institutions teaching classes within Second Life, but I am not aware of any that take advantage of the economics learning inherent in this environment.  Ultimately my involvement with Second Life is an ongoing experiment. The eventual emergence of such online VR spaces was presaged by science fiction writers, such as Neal Stephenson's vision in Snowcrash. Through participation in this community, I ride the next wave of society's increasing merger with the Internet.
The virtual content was developed primarily on a late-model PC using several pieces of software, including the Second Life client, Photoshop, and Poser. Future expansion is planned for both the lake destination and the animation store. In particular, there is a parcel of undeveloped land further from the lake.
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