Library 2.0 Committee

Well, we have formed a Library 2.0 Committee at work, so let's see what exciting new things we can offer our existing patrons and those we don't even reach at all, at present. Stay tuned!

There's rose-coloured glasses and then there's just pink, pink and more pink

Picture is from The Second Life Herald article mentioned in the post below.

Barbie World of Fashion 40 years on

In the same vein as Sony's "Home" is the Barbie virtual world called "Barbie Girls". Visually, it is a bilious combination of pinks, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Hello Kitty school of design. Being a vintage and mod Barbie collector myself, this new Barbie world is as far away from true fashion and style as Hannah Montana is from Audrey Hepburn. It's downright ghastly and could only appeal to the young and befuddled in our society: those poor kids who actually believe this stuff is interesting and fun. Barbie Girls has very little to offer, it would seem, in the way of game-play or virtual social interaction. It is all pretty dreadful when you think about the way children, particularly young girls, have been hijacked by people selling useless stuff and manipulating their minds and behaviour, just to make a dollar.

In Barbie Girls, the emphasis seems to be on dressing up your avatar (the power of the 'makeover'), buying stuff (clothing, etc). Here is an article about it in The Second Life Herald (unconnected with Linden Lab's SL). Players use Barbie Bucks instead of Linden Dollars. You can buy virtual furniture or 'furni' as they term it, or virtual pets. I suppose on the positive side, it is reducing actual clothing bought (and as quickly thrown away as last week's fashion) and unwanted real animal pets.

And yet, it is not THAT far away from a game that Mattel put out 40 years ago, in 1967, called "The Barbie World of Fashion game by Mattel". There was still that emphasis on fashion, cute guys, but it wasn't so insidious and was probably aimed at an older market. And the fashions actually looked like fashion - you know, related to art and design, not some sort of ghastly pink cyberchic masquerading as 'fashion'. Cheap disposable fashion, as in the real world, now represented virtually. How utterly pointless! Mattel also release Barbie's "Keys To Fame" game in 1963 but at least the premise of that was "your dream career comes true!". Gosh, a career! There's something that young girls today don't seem to aspire to. They just want fame, money and to be very attractive (and don't forget sexy, even if you are only a tween or younger).

What a shame that all that effort has been put into a game which adds to the already gargantuan effort by companies to further squander and possibly destroy the potential of young girls in the Western world. When I was pre-pubescent, I dreamed of being a ground-breaking scientist or an inventor or an investigator par excellence. I don't think I ever thought of being famous for its own sake or being a popstar/rockstar/fashion model. Now that seems to be all these girls want to be. What an awful waste!

Sony Playstation Home - safer, but...

I read with amusement that Sony is launching a 'safe' social game product called "Home" which mimics Second Life (SL) in some aspects. Clearly there must be a market for this type of game, although SL is, of course not a game at all really - not in the conventional sense anyway. Home is described as "a social layer for the PS3", developed for people who wanted to experience some of the fun of SL, such as customising your avatar, meeting people, etc, but without the full-on scariness of the unknown found online, I presume. It also seems more about the game-play rather than actually creating a SL or other existence. For example, going 10-pin bowling with virtual strangers who have been vetted to ensure they don't offend or spoil your enjoyment. There will apparently be some live events too, which does make it more like a real virtual world (a virtual real world?) rather than just a game environment. This is the article I read: http://www.smh.com.au/news/articles/open-house/2008/08/26/1219516479540.html and the picture shown is from that article.

Label Clouds and Tag Clouds

At the behest of a fellow Learning 2.0 blogger who has been courageously delving into the various gadgets and widgets one might apply to one's blog, I tried adding a tag cloud. I was provided with the following link http://phy3blog.googlepages.com/Beta-Blogger-label-cloud.html. Being not afraid of HTML or even XHTML coding, I bravely added the relevant code and... nothing! It very quickly dawned on me that the reason for this was: no labels on my blog! It's pretty difficult to make a cloud from thin air, as it were. So I added some labels to my posts (which I had noted some fellow Learning 2.0 bloggers had done - those clever clogs!) and... voila! It worked this time. The only problem was that I had more of a tag row than tag cloud, so I will have to add some more labels to achieve the desired cloudy look for my tag or label grouping. It worked like a charm though: I clicked on my label 'Second Life' and my blog re-appeared showing only my postings with that label. I think a tag cloud on a library blog would be very useful to customers indeed as long as the content is there and the labelling is good.

A post-hiatus post

Blogger have developed a few new page elements, including the Blogroll, so I have added that with 2 of my favourite fellow Web 2.0 learners' blogs listed. I also notice that, finally, I can now find my blog in Google (those little webcrawlers must have indexed it at last) and there is also something coming up in Technorati. Wow, I am famous (just kidding)...

The Strange Otherness of Second Life

Whilst playing what are usually termed video games, especially the later (and thereby increasingly detailed and sophisticated) Harry Potter games on PS2, I often got considerable enjoyment from just wandering around and exploring the virtual world that some designers had quite obviously spent many, many hours creating. There was little or no danger to 'me' (and none at all to me) and, as 'Harry Potter' or one of the other characters, it was possible to immerse oneself in the virtual (albeit limited) world of Hogwarts or whatever. One could enjoy the virtual nature, lighting, sounds and effects at one's leisure. The downside was, I suppose, that if you met another character (not a main character), and there were indeed other students or creatures sprinkled around the virtual world for those who could be bothered to explore, rather than just following the linear nature of the platform game, these characters could only 'speak' what they had been pre-programmed to 'say' to you.

This appreciation for the virtual world is undoubtedly what has led me to investigate Second Life (SL). I have shunned any 'scary' fighting games such as World of Warcraft despite the fact that I can see the artwork and technology of these types of games is incredible. I have seen screen captures of wonderful-looking worlds in other games but would never play or participate in them because of either an element of conflict or the realisation that if playing online, one is playing against real people with an unknown set of ethics, values, behaviour, and so on. I get the impression it can be pretty brutal in the world of online gaming, especially for the novice. However, at the same time I am missing out on experiencing a richly detailed virtual other world.

As I previously posted, when I found out about SL several years ago, I could see it was something quite different from gaming. I could see it could be attractive to non-gamers and the relation to real life was actually probably a lot stronger, with greater attraction for adults, rather than teenagers or children. However, it did seem a bit creepy and perhaps had a sordid element to it. After SL was covered in the Web 2.0 program, I decided to look into it again from a different angle - that of the potential for education and libraries, especially reference work.

I quickly read the following titles from my library: "Second Life for dummies" by Sarah Robbins and Mark Bell, "Second Life in-world travel guide" by Sean Percival, "How to do everything with Second life" by Richard Mansfield, "Designing your second life: techniques and inspiration for you to design your ideal parallel universe within the online community, Second Life" by Rebecca Tapley. I did not read them in detail but skimmed over the technological 'how to' bits to try and get to the real heart of SL and I believe I have a 'handle' on it now. It would be very difficult to sum up what SL actually is in a few words but it is a fascinating thing, that's for sure. What most intrigues me is the technology and the potential of it. I couldn't give a fair description of SL without having actually experienced it first-hand, and over some time, which brings me to my next quandary: whether to stick my toe in or not?

SL is really, more than anything else, an interactive online social tool. There's nothing wrong with that, but it holds little fascination or allure for me in that respect. If I want to meet people, I prefer to do it in the real world. I can see that meeting people who share the same interests is useful and fun, but, again, I can do that in reality. Sure, there are people on the other side of the world who I am in contact with, but I can use email or other methods of communication at the moment.

The job of creating an avatar seems laborious which is something I had not considered. I thought you would just pick an avatar and off you go. Indeed, you can do that but SL prejudices seem to be as bad (if not worse!) as in Real Life (RL). If you have not spent many hours altering your avatar with custom-designed skin, hair, clothing and so on, then you are viewed negatively or you stand out as a newbie. The only way to avoid such censure or judgement seems to be to take an avatar of an animal or other creature (a ball of light, for example) but of course that limits you to where you can go. Try turning up to a vintage jazz club or a library as a ball of light or a dragon! Anyhow, it's all very strange and I am not sure I can be bothered. The other element is meeting and virtually interacting with other 'real' people. Unlike a game, there are few rules and anything could happen. I find the idea of 'meeting' another person in that way very peculiar, although maybe it's not like that at all.

The other thing I noticed about SL is much of it seems to be about acquiring things: house, furnishings, accoutrements, clothes, jewellery, etc. It's like the real world only weirder. As I am not a lover of shopping at any time, this element of SL is also quite unattractive to me. The most interesting facets of SL to me are: the ability to explore, in-world gaming, and the ability to attend virtual learning events. I can also see the benefits in 'role playing', such as woman 'playing' as a 'man' and experiencing what that would be like, virtually. There is great potential for learning, such as in a news item I saw recently where Israeli students played a virtual game (not SL) where they had to be Palestinians. The students said it helped them to understand what it would be like. Clearly, especially for young people, this type of virtual reality helps their understanding and imagination.

Who knows? Maybe in the near future my curiousity will get the better of me and I will take the plunge. Or maybe I will wait until I can see greater benefits from SL before doing so. I guess, ultimately, there is not a great deal of risk as you are not 'you' in SL but an avatar, but it's that fear of the unknown I suppose. If I do go ahead, stand by for another posting on my initial experiences! In fact, I might now go and see what I can find out about other people's first experiences before I go ahead myself. I just have this nagging thought that I should get in now, before this virtual world thing explodes!