(We Are the Network on a field trip, one of the many learning networks active in Second Life)
(update: read more on maxping about Microsoft leaving Second Life and preferring ReactionGrid, an open source alternative).
Yesterday at the Connectivism meeting in Second Life we were wondering how “connectivist” our activities in Second Life are. I just listened to a lecture Stephen Downes gave about “Learning Networks: Theory and Practice”.
In addition, there is this helpful introduction to social network analysis. These documents can help us to see what can be considered good networks, and use these criteria in order to evaluate Second Life.
These are criteria mentioned by Stephen, I’ll add some comment regarding Second Life:
1) The more decentralized the more stable a network is. Suppose you have one speaker and we’re all supposed to listen to her and only her, and that person suddenly dies, well, that would be end of story.
2) A network should be distributed, not one silo. Imagine discrete physical locations, avoiding to put all your eggs in one basket.
3) Disintermediation: removing the barriers, gate-keepers, editors, reviewers. Messages in a network get meaning when they reach a receiver and the context of that receiver, so intervening when they are still out there is acting on incomplete meanings.
4) Unbundling stuff. Often you have to buy a whole book while you only want that one paper or chapter. Taking content apart in discrete elements allows you to reorganize it to make it fit your own needs. So this involves working towards the smallest possible units of learning.
5) Dis-integration: instead of software which only can work if it fits tightly into some highly integrated environment, in a network you should have applications communicating with each other using a common language.
6) Democratization, autonomy: each entity in a network should be empowered to decide for itself what it wants to do, to decide what the nature of its connections is. It’s about personal empowerment.
7) Constant change: connections grow, evolve, change, so the network is dynamic and changing.
Learning, so Stephen told his audience, is not something we have to do separated from the rest, like in a library. We read, communicate and learn anywhere. The meaning, the learning is not contained in the entities, but in the organization of the entities and in the connections.
This means that knowledge is distributed. Nobody knows how to build a jet airplane, different people know different parts of it. The one person’s knowledge is also distributed, he needs to know how to communicate with other persons, how to manage the connections in order to do his job.
The case of Second Life
Now what does this mean for our Second Life experiences? I’m not familiar with the technological infrastructure of Second life. Is it distributed, like Google distributes its computing power over many dispersed servers? Or is is more like a silo, highly vulnerable for a failure of some major component?
Let’s continue: what about disintermediation, gate-keepers, reviewers, etc? Here Second Life seems to do a good job. There is no jury out there, telling you whether your virtual object is well made or not. You have the freedom to build an absolutely crappy virtual house, or to make something highly original.
Unbundling stuff. I can use Second Life as a learning environment, and go to a particular session of Metanomics but not to another, to a particular seminar at Rockcliffe University etc. Almost all those activities are free, and there is not pressure to buy bundles of services or goods.
Dis-integration: as far as I understand with my limited technological understanding, Second Life uses rather proprietary technology. There is Linden script and specific building techniques. That technology works in Second Life, but not necessarily elsewhere. However, things are changing, and for instance it will become possible (when is not clear) to import objects made with other technologies, and even standards such as COLLADA would be used. Other worlds such as Metaplace adopt the common languages of the web, but at a price: Metaplace is more 2,5 D than 3D.
Autonomy, change: I guess one can say that avatars in Second Life can decide for themselves what they do and what they don’t want to do, it is an open-ended world.
(Very) preliminary conclusion: Second Life as an open-ended platform has a number of characteristics corresponding with what is needed for a well functioning network (disintermediation, autonomy, unbundling). There are other aspects which could be more problematic: centralization, proprietary technology. The movement towards the web and opening up the technology (accepting imports, enabling interoperability in the OpenSim universe) would make the platform more suited as a platform for well-functioning networks.
Furthermore, people use Second Life embedded in other social media (Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Ning). Even if the platform would crash, activities could go on, not in Second Life, but in other 2D or 3D environments, because the social connections would not be lost. This makes the more centralized and proprietary aspects (much) less of a problem.
For instance, suppose Second Life would crash in a serious way, the Metanomics group would easily reach most members and organize meetings in another virtual world or in 2D.
How sound are the criteria?
Of course, we should ask ourselves whether the criteria mentioned by Stephen are that self-evident. Let’s take disintermediation: in his view gatekeepers seem to be a nuisance. However, many people seem to appreciate the filtering of news and information by people they somehow trust.
The print newspapers have their problems, but if you take into account the digital newspapers, the format of curated bundles of information seems to be far from dead. Or looking at education, even at a time when much content is available for free, people like guidance by professional educators.
Once people want personal guidance and feedback, the issue of the business model becomes relevant once again. Prices of digital content go down all the time for very basic micro-economic reasons, but guidance by other people and direct access to them is another matter (even though the internet makes it easier to reach more people and to have more personal contacts).
Direct access to other people is facilitated by the feeling that those people share the same (virtual) space – which is a strong point of Second Life and similar environments: it facilitates direct contact, making it more intense but also more affordable. Direct feedback from an educator or some recognized expert in Second Life (and elsewhere of course) has value.
I’m not sure where this fits into Stephen’s thinking. I would like to develop the issue of the business model further, not only because people need to earn a living, but also because of the desired sustainability of (professional) networks.
Taking into account Stephen’s criteria and my own musings about those criteria, I think Second Life as a social media tool embedded in a whole social media universe is doing a pretty good job.
Roland Legrand
Read more: it seems Microsoft is leaving Second Life and is heading for ReactionGrid, an example of another big corporation going for open source 3D environments. What does this tell us about the network choices of big IT corporations? More on MaxPing…
