Search for A Second Life Culture or Omphaloskepsis

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/jeansienkin

I'm going to continue my journey for "a" Second Life® culture and risk an omphaloskepsis outbreak. If you've found your way here from other places, welcome. This is my third post in a series on "The Search for A Culture in Second Life". You may want to read the first and second posts.

This week a quote trickled through my twitter feed from @MeganMurray 7:29AM May 6th:

I sometimes think we talk abt tools and metrics more because they are easier to grasp & less combustible than talking about being human.

I agree. This entire discussion of culture - virtual or otherwise - is messy stuff.

Questions, presumptions and world views - are we just navel gazing?

More than one person has asked me why I started this particular set of posts; some ask from curiosity, some with a taint of suspicion. Some have gone so far as to attack me personally, and some suggest that I'm wasting my time that could otherwise be spent on more important (albeit undefined) endeavors. Still others encourage me quietly from the sidelines.

I wasted a lot of time agonizing over answers and second-guessing myself but I've come out on the other side still believing one thing with certainty: There are no right or wrong answers, there are merely more questions. And I do believe that it's our ability to ask questions, and our willingness to try to answer them - each in our own way - that matters. Questions drive progress and innovation. On the flip side, unspoken presumptions and assumptions thwart it.


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The Search for A Second Life Culture - Part 0

cc image courtesy flickr.com/photos/xerones

"Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of tradition (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; cultural systems may on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning elements of further action." [1]

In 1952, Kroeber and Kluckhohn [1] compiled a list of no less than 164 definitions of culture; it's not surprising that the question "If Second Life® has a culture, what is it?" becomes as unwieldy as a broadsword.

Kluckhohn suggested that "culture is to society what memory is to individuals" which leads me to believe that culture is not absolute but rather like a collective hunch, or a recollection based on certain characteristics. Culture is then, as Eric Champion explains, "impossible to clearly demarcate" and is not a single thing but a "connection and rejection of threads over space and time". [2]

I really liked Tateru Nino's perspective: "Culture is an aggregate appearance of many entities, just as your skin is an aggregate of many types of cells." To which I'd add: And therefore, there are no right or wrong answers, just shared insights.

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Choices and Viewer 2.0 Assimilation

 cc image courtesy Niklas Bildhauer

It was a day of changes today for the Second Life ecosystem.  T Linden talked fast and furiously at today's Metanomics weekly chat about some of that change.  He spent a lot of time talking about choices, and how Linden Lab believes that choice is important.

Some of those choices were clear today if you wanted to exercise your license of the services afforded to you by the virtual world Second Life.  Some were, well, not so much.

For example, if already a Second Life Resident, when you logged in today you had a choice: Accept the new Terms of Service (ToS), or don't log in.

If you were new to Second Life today (welcome) you got two choices:
1) Accept the Terms of Service (ToS) or don't log in.
2) Download and use Viewer 2.0 and only Viewer 2.0, or don't log in.

One choice no one got to exercise was well, ironically about choice.  Once you agreed the new Terms of Service, you personally also agreed to the terms of the recently released Policy on Third-Party Viewers.

Any access to or use of the Service through a software client other than the Linden Software that logs into the Servers (referred to as a "Third-Party Viewer") is subject to these Terms of Service and the terms of the Policy on Third-Party Viewers. The Policy on Third-Party Viewers provides required and prohibited functionality for Third-Party Viewers as well as other terms for those who use, develop, or distribute Third-Party Viewers; however, Linden Lab offers and supports the Service only as offered by Linden Lab and is not obligated to allow access to or use of the Service by any software or means not provided by Linden Lab. You understand and agree that Linden Lab is not responsible or liable for any aspect of the Service that is accessed or experienced using software or other means not provided by Linden Lab.

Any use of the Service, including Content on the Service, other than as specifically authorized in this Agreement, without the prior written permission of Linden Lab, is strictly prohibited and will terminate all licenses granted herein.

What's the Policy on Third-Party Viewers?  Well if you have to ask, maybe it's best just not to use one!  Essentially this means that for the majority of people, the choice to use a third party viewer (even those on the approved list) is paired with immeasurably high risk, thereby essentially nullifying that "choice". 

Sadly, this point was completely missing from (update to my initial post which wrongly attributed the post to T Linden) M Linden's blog post "Updated Second Life Terms of Service" summarizing most of the significant ToS and Privacy Policy changes.  I'm not sure why this was overlooked.  It would have been a simple paragraph to write, in fact a sentence would have sufficed.

By agreeing to the ToS you are personally accountable for the compliance of your chosen viewer with our Third-Party Viewer policy.

That resonates with the rest of the ToS emphasis of limited liability, personal accountability and choice. It's much better than the alternative:

Welcome to Viewer 2.0, you will be assimilated.

In my other capacity, I'm writing a blog post about the latest Facebook policy changes and its approach to governance.  No wonder it feels like a Monday.


Be careful out there.  See you around a grid.
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