Developing the Local Virtual

One of the early ideas coming out of Bloomington RootsCamp was this thought by Sophia to use Second Life as a way of visualizing proposals. She could see developers inviting council members and the public to experience the buildings they want, perhaps even making adjustments in that space (or better, allowing a Web 2.0 philosophy of content creation and let local citizens make those adjustments themselves). Or perhaps sustainability initiatves illustrating the pros and cons of green-friendly changes. Add to that “home of the future” kinds of 3D portals, where a trip to the Bloomington Utilities Department information is as simple as having your avatar turn on a virtual faucet.

Sophia also had this observation about the Linden Labs presentation of SL:

When you visit the Second Life site you’ll find that it reads and navigates like a realtors guide…or even an economic development incentive package. That the website’s enticements are that you can “develop property, buy land, start a business,” shocked me more than anything!

Second Life has some issues with scalability. While Linden is confident they can handle it, anyone who has been in world recently has noticed some frequency of arriving in places you didn’t want because your intended destination is offline, or having to strut around in your e-unmentionables because your clothing downloaded later. How Linden responds to this issue — and how new and existing users respond to their response — will dictate whether this has staying power. Cyberspace is littered with good ideas slowed by problems, especially when there is always some other company ready to jump into the fray.

Local needs, however, are not as demanding as the global ones. Whether or not Chicago or San Francisco ever can invest the resources into providing such citizen interfaces, a place like Bloomington could make great use of Second Life. All of the traditional strengths of Internet communication are still present, especially diversity as more and more people come online. But locality also offers a tie-in to offline connections as well. Local use of the Internet can go a long way to improving the quality of dialogue and projects, even if the people chatting online live within walking distance. I would argue especially so.