Second Life Valleywagged and "Shirked"

I read Clay Shirky's post on Valleywag more than once. I was hoping to find at least some reference to his avatar so that I could at least take comfort that he wasn't yet another "reporter" withouth any first hand knowledge or experience. After all, Clay started talking about Second Life since it's launch in 2003 so one would assume that he has at least one avatar, maybe even an alt or two. But, after reading the well traveled Shirky's post, I am left wondering .. have you *even* experienced Second Life lately Clay?

To quote from Clay's post:

Someone who tries a social service once and bails isn't really a user any more than someone who gets a sample spoon of ice cream and walks out is a customer.

I'd have to agree, and I would add:

Someone who tries *anything* once and bails isn't really a *reporter, writer, consultant or teacher* any more than someone who gets a sample spoon of ice cream and walks out is a customer.

So Clay and I conceptually agree about what it means to have some credibility, but there is where it stops.

Today is an odd day - I disagree with Clay Shirky and agree *in prinicple* with Prokofy Neva who obviously stayed up much later than I did last night crafting a response to Clay's "petulant dismissal of Second Life". Prokofy and I do not share the same perspective on a number of issues, such as conspiracy and insider theories, but we share a resoundingly common perspective from this well written vantage:

Shirky's essay doesn't even have to be long on real field-tested analysis (I've never heard of him even coming to Second Life; he doesn't appeared to have glanced at the economics stats page); it's enough for him, with his street cred, to begin whining about all the huge hype. I'm a big debunker of the hype, too. Yet the spirit of what is happening in Second Life is being missed in the welter of analysis about fake sign-up numbers and cludgy technology.

The fact is that Second Life represents a new form of emotional bandwidth, as Pathfinder Linden and others have called it, that indicates new forms of communication that might become a medium as well as a message: not that we are all one with hands across the sea -- that is so last century, which was actually chock-full of genocides -- but that even with our very real and deep differences, we can communicate *better* through shared expression, building, projects, and interactivity outside the boundaries of space, time, physical appearance, and even race or gender.

I could not have said it better, but that is where our alignment ends. The fact is, Second Life is an example of a rich environment where everyone can benefit, even the "tekkies" as Prokofy calls them, as well as every archetype outlined by Henrik Bennetsen.
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Second Life Update and Product Management

The next update to Second Life is scheduled to be released this Wednesday, December 13th and the mere mention of it has caused uproar among the community. Uproar from the Second Life residents these days has become routine; nearly every bit of information - arguably good, bad or otherwise - is met with some fervent and derogatory remarks. But I think there is more here than just the usual riff.

I appreciated Gwyneth Llewelyn's latest post to explain what it means to manage an inherently complex piece of software, but I am certain will land not on deaf ears per se, but on those ears that neither know nor care what the man behind the curtain is doing. (confirmed by comments to the New World Notes post about same).

So what does this really mean? The comments tell a story beyond the normal moans and groans of an active community - they indicate that the platform has reached the proverbial tipping point, far outpacing the reach and moderation of the few early adopters and archetypes.

That means it's time for some serious Product Management at Linden Lab. Right now it seems they have marketing and technical planning, but the real essence of Product Management is to not only understand the technical aspects as Gwyneth outlined, but also must be able to translate a meaningful plan to the residents, in a way that everyone can appreciate.

A Product Manager would have ensured that Jeska Linden's release announcement was explicit and more transparent, something to the effect: "We are working hard to resolve the bugs introduced by the last release. This is what we think is most important, and why."

Product Management would help focus the development efforts toward what is most needed - in balance - between the adoption of the platform by the residents (what need is SL filling?) and the LL need to maintain technical and architectural viability - scalability, stability and extensibility.

Given the recent population explosion, this must be industrial strength Product Management if the platform is to grow during what will feel like an unbearable drought of release planning, road mapping and inevitable second guessing.
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And the Fork ran away with the Spoon ...

I am reading The State of Play- Law, Games and Virtual Worlds and today found Chapter 11, There is No Spoon, authored by Yochai Benkler to be particularly intriguing. Yochai is a brilliant scholar, albeit verbose (have you *read* Wealth of Networks?), but he opens the essay with a simple yet disconcerting sentence:

Virtual worlds are like The Matrix.

Yochai argues that virtual worlds are no more than three primary elements: an interface, a platform for play, and a platform for human connection and collaboration. Does he really mean "there is no spoon"? That's it? I have my doubts here.

I agree, those are primary elements - like elements on a periodic table for the chemistry of a virtual world - but are they the *only* elements? Certainly not. They are necessary, but not sufficient to define the scope of a virtual world. And, like any other world (implying some form of life), there are elements to the virtual world, and there are attendant forces (let's say policies) that define the behavior and properties of those elements in combination and interaction. One way of looking at those policies is to understand the interactions in Second Life such as property rights and relations.

Yochai argues that the question as to whether property rights should be afforded to Second Life is a *game* design question, not a policy question. Design? A game can be designed, a virtual world, however cannot - nay, should not - be designed. [We could explore a treatise on evolution versus creationism here, but his discussion would rapidly degrade so I will stick to Yochai's essay.] It is this distinction, or rather lack there of, that I argue undermines Yochai's perspective. If Second Life were merely a game, the value of property rights would be arguably unimportant insomuch as there was no value in that which cannot be used for individual gain.

Yochai suggests that Second Life has a basic design characteristic similar to Wikipedia - one of a collaborative creation platform. I don't know how much time Yochai has spent in Second Life, but I think he would be hard pressed to find anyone that has tried to actually collaborate on a build that the underlying design premise is a platform for collaboration. He does, however, touch on a more intriguing and relevant point.

Whether there are beneficial effects to introducing exclusive rights, on the other hand, depends on how one understands the motivation of the participants.

Herein lies the true debate. Games have goals and objectives, shared or otherwise, these motivate participants to participate and in some cases collaborate. What, then, are the motivations of Second Life residents?

I would argue that motivations are driven by needs, and needs can be classified and categorized much as they are in the real world. And by now, you may be seeing a theme emerge in this blog.
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