Second Life ... Rights

Reader warning: this blog post is more a stream of conscience post that I would prefer. Proceed with caution.

I've had blog-block for the better part of three months now. I managed to squeak out a post or two, but there's been something eating away in the back of my mind that I was unable to articulate. Each time I sat down to post, that thought was lingering, half spoken, half digested, half seen, but never fully mature. It's still not fully matured, but at least it's here now. It's about the design of Second Life, or rather the lack of design and what it means for avatar "rights".

What struck me today as I was listening to Robin Linden speak at the MacArthur Series on Philanthropy and Virtual Worlds: Considering Civil Liberties was this: that which we know collectively as "Second Life" was not designed from a master plan, but evolved from a set of seedling technology and social hypotheses that have subsequently matured like kudzu and are strangling all of the simple minded summaries such as "Second Life is a 3D game" and raising larger issues about behavior, and therefore rights.

Despite what Ginsu Yoon espouses, Second Life is neither a game nor a product in the typical shrink wrap sense, and it has far and away exceeded a "software as a service" offering. It is a system of systems that includes hardware, software, financial, social and political systems and most of all, people. Where you have people you have to determine whether you impose a social contract and define rights, or you can you decide not to decide - as in the case of Second Life.

Ever the social optimist, Philip Rosedale in 2004 interview with the Second Life Herald explains this philosophy:

So SL poses a new question... what if the online environment offered you MORE freedoms than the real world, in just about every way. I assert, by comparison to these historical cases, that we might therefore actually behave better in such a place. We might learn faster, interact more deeply, and therefore become better people, at least on some levels.

Of course we think they (property rights) are fundamental rights. We think of SL as like a developing nation, and it has been shown repeatedly in history that the nations which give strong land and IP rights to their citizens grow fastest and are most competitive. BTW, there is a book called 'The Mystery of Capital' that really hammers this point home. Other folks haven't done this for two reasons... One is that they don't have the deeper mission that we do... to create a new and better world. And the second is that they fear (as large companies) the legal risk that comes with the position. They don't want to deal with all the challenges. I think the first point is fundamental though... they are simply building entertainment products... and from a simple perspective entertainment is easier to do with lots of control. We are just looking at things from a much larger scale.

Arguably the most interesting thing about Second Life is the combination of creative freedom and people, some with strongly held convictions that residents have rights akin to those in the U.S. Constitution. The challenge is, however, that property rights and IP ownership mean consequently that governance is neither centralized within Linden Lab, nor can it be held by any other single entity. Linden Lab cannot assume the "god" role of typical MMOG designers simply because far too many things are outside their control and as such, logically they will react as required to avoid any legal liability but will otherwise not impose. This has been demonstrated in the rulings regarding age play, gambling and of late, banking institutions. Of course these restrictions make Philip sad; they violate the very core of his beliefs about societal evolution.

In today's MacArthur discussion, the First Amendment was cited in context of actions that take place in world and on Linden Lab managed forums, which are essentially private property. Didn't the Supreme Court rule that the U.S. Constitution does not give individuals the right to enter and remain on private property to exercise their right to free speech except in the case of public spaces such as shopping malls? Unless Second Life is considered a shopping center (arguably a stretch) it's private property, and the "free speech" argument holds no water especially in the case where banning or otherwise excluding individual rights is essential to maintaining Second Life as a business.

So this is the root of my blog-block:

What is Second Life?
Is it Philip Rosedale's world changer, or simply a business?
Can it be both?

People often ask me "Who will build the "Second Life" killer application?" The answer is there will be no single Second Life killer. Second Life may ultimately die under the weight of its own expanse and our inability to successfully address the multitude of social and legal issues it has raised. In return we will have highly structured, tightly controlled Stepford virtual worlds, all lined up in pink chiffon and serving cupcakes.

The vision of Second Life as world changer requires we start seriously addressing the social, political and cultural issues in something more than one hour fireside chats with hand picked celebrities in well-controlled settings. We need serious and actionable discussion and people who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty and their knees skinned. It's going to be a long haul.
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The 25 Group Symptom in Second Life

I have been struggling with my first of 2008 posts as it was in theory going to be the predictable predictions post, but I really hate prediction posts and frankly another issue has been weighing more heavily on my mind - the "25 Groups" limitation.

The "25 Groups" problem has been swirling about the grid for many months, and most recently gained more press appeal once it was adopted by vocal bloggers (1) (2) (3) in an attempt to get people to vote on the JIRA entry. I agree wholeheartedly with Ordinal Malaprop's perspectives on this matter and *if* I could log in to Jira right now, I'd quote from some of the dialog there.

I did raise a vote on Jira MISC-208 rather than abstain with the sole intent of raising awareness about how horribly broken Second Life Product Management has become as evidenced so clearly by this single case study, even before it has fully unfolded. I'll get right to my punch line, so we don't miss it:

The group limitation is a symptom, not the cause.
Simply raising the group limit, even without bounds, will NOT solve the problem(s) and may create more trouble.

Starting with group-owned land and diverging from there, Second Life Residents have found creative ways to use groups to overcome what are otherwise shortfalls or failings in the product. Many group features such as basic instant messaging are unreliable, so why then would the populous request more of a bad thing?

The real problem is that this is a symptom of much larger issues, and the rush to determine a quick fix or even the multitude of workarounds can lead to yet even larger problems. What is required in this case, and many others is some serious root cause and usage analysis that any Product Manager would have likely already done. In fact, I mentioned it before, but I will say it again more firmly:

It's far past time for serious Second Life
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT

Second Life Product Management is a mess, and this particular feature request "More than 25 groups!" has demonstrated many failings of the current system and attendant process that I won't rant forever on all of them, but here are my two main peeves.

1) JIRA does not replace Product Management
Jira was developed and is used quite successfully as a bug and issue tracking tool and it is not the problem. Putting Jira usability and due process issues aside, the first sign of the problem is that Jira is being used as a catch all repository for everything to bugs, requirements, priorities, assignments, and feature requests. I dare say if you had the intestinal fortitude, you might even find a marriage proposal swirling amongst the chaff. Even worse, the implication that the number of votes something gets determines it's priority is deplorable.

Product Management requires forward thinking and proactive planning based on two things: the product road map informed by a healthy business plan and the data about the operations current deployment. Data can include include anecdotal reports, but it should be balanced with meaningful and verifiable sources of information. I have yet to see a meaningful product road map from Linden; perhaps it's held close to the vest for business reasons, but the closest we've come to insight are blog mentions about things such as Expressive Puppeteering - remember that highly publicized feature?

2) Discussions of solutions to symptoms are dangerous!
Making a simple statement such as "increase the number of groups" is much like walking into your doctor and demanding an increased dosage of pain killers; in the end the results might be strikingly similar. Likewise, alternative solutions to resolve the symptom are often useless and at worst more harmful. Consider the cases: Patient: "I need more pain killers because it hurts when I raise my arm". Doctor: "Stop raising your arm.", or perhaps Patient:"I need more pain killers because it hurts when I raise my arm.", Doctor: "Let's just cut off that arm."

Finally, random discussion about why something cannot be changed technically are valid to and for a particular audience, but lend little to the overall analysis and subsequent collective understanding of an issue. The most important effect of this particular symptom should be to raise awareness about the multitude of issues surrounding what is ultimately the most fundamentally broken element of the Second Life product - sociability and networking.

To actually resolve the 25 group symptom and uncover many others, Linden Lab should take a comprehensive look at the spectrum of how groups are used within Second Life (versus "as designed" use cases) as well as the attendant pain points such as the routine of even simple predictive messaging failures. Let's face it, messaging is hardly a difficult technology to master but on how many occasions have your attempts to message even a moderately sized group failed? Being able to actually contact people in a reliable manner is sort of key to a socially based virtual world, and any product manager might be losing sleep about it.

Share Some Grace: