“One of the reasons why Second Life is a unique experience for business is because of the brain experience”, Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden), the creator of Linden Labs said yesterday, during an event hosted by Train for Success.
It was an interesting conversation for me, mostly because that was what brought me to Second Life in the first place. In all my presentations, during the last year, I have referred an article I found in the Financial Times saying that “human brains do not separate a virtual emotion from a real one”. Meaning: if you find a great new friend in a virtual world, your mind will be as happy as if you have made the same friend during a real life coffee break.
And yes, even if it’s not the same, even if nobody likes to spend the entire day sitting in front of the computer and even if hugs are needed these days, the truth is: work is work, knowledge is knowledge, goals are goals and, by the end of the day, the only thing that really matters is how much could you really achieve. And, of course, the possibility of having more for less (more communication, more external support and feedback, better access to external sources for less money, in less time and without distance being a problem) is always a plus.
The other interesting thing Rosedale mentioned (and I didn’t know about it) is that our brains learn better over unique experiences, rather than in normal ones. So, there is a better chance for all the workers of a company to assimilate the content of a meeting if they are, for example, sitting on a beautiful beach scenery in Second Life instead of assisting to boring video conference. This of course, is also valid for students and educators. My argument so far was that youth would be much more engaged to learn about specific and boring subjects like politics if institutions adopted a user-friendly language, similar to video games.
By the end of the meeting, I had the feeling that Second Life is going just where it should (or at least where I would love to see it going). It’s good that Lindens understand the need of making things easier for all the ones who need to use Second Life as work tool instead of a hobby. It’s great to see how more and more people pay attention to this type of use and how LL support this vision. The truth is Second Life has always been a place where you can built whatever you want and we don’t really need Linden’s to do so. We have always been free to promote real life projects and SL as the new era of communication (instead of bad marketing campaigns, like too many companies tried). The only real advantage is how the public image of SL can benefit from a more “business focused” official speech.
Who knows, maybe LL will happen to be one of the few companies in the world benefiting from the global crisis. Several creators have told me how they started selling much less virtual items because many users were spending less money, buying less land and, of course, need not SL items to go with it. In result, the creators did also abandon the land where they used to have profitable shops. I’m not sure if the official numbers confirm this (I’m reporting nothing but informal conversations) but it sounds logical scenery. As logic as the other way around, where you can imagine that, because of the crisis, people will look more and more for cheaper types of entertainment, such as Second Life. Plus, companies will be forced to reduce expenses and look for the best results for the lowest price (again, more for less). In this case, crisis could mean nothing else but “change” to Linden’s and… a good change, for me. Mostly because of my deep belief that, if used in the right way, Second Life can really help changing the real world into a better one.
