The Juggernauts of Second Life
Queens, New York, in Second Life
Slowly but surely, Second Life is coming to be seen as a tool not just for geeks and techies, but for everyone. That’s the paradigm shift you want to look for, as that’s the kind of thing that will eventually launch us into the 3pointD world. One sign can be found in the humble borough of Queens, New York, where a local community board is holding the first meeting of the Juggernaut Club this Saturday. The long-term goal of the club is to “introduce young adults living in northwest Queens to the economic opportunities this new world offers, to help them be creators of knowledge.” The club’s first project, intended in part to get people familiar with virtual life and work, will be to contribute to the development of a seven-acre park by hashing out ideas in Second Life.
Residents living near Landing Lights Park, located just south of LaGuardia Airport, are developing plans for upgrading the 7 acre park. A source of ideas for the upgrade will come from a park model that’s been created in secondlife. One reason for starting the Juggernaut Club now is the hope that club members will help local residents manage this new information tool. For example, club members might help residents with park designs or creating new items to be placed in the virtual park.
The virtual park project was created in conjunction with the New York Law School’s Democracy Island initiative in Second Life, where the park model can be found. To see the model for yourself, click in the SLurlPane at the top of the right column here, while the link lasts, or visit via this SL link. [UPDATE: It seems SL links to private islands don’t work as expected. To visit the site, launch Second Life and go to the Democracy Island sim, coordinates 33, 78, 85.] I love stuff like this because it’s 3pointD in action. Already it’s changing the world.
Feeds
This project is very neat, and I feel proud that I helped a little at the beginning to sustain the organizer Tom Ramona a bit, brief him, and convince him he should spend time in SL. It’s a good example of how such RL projects might benefit — but there are a lot of kinks. I remain puzzled why the park
didn’t recreate an actual park space with Linden trees and resident-created benches, but instead made a kind of architect’s model. I’m told this is due to the need to port it outside of SL or make it portable or something, but it still seems to me, if you want to attract kids especially, it needs to be a walkable, clickable world at scale that an avatar can walk through, and I thought that was the whole point of SL.
Re: “coming to be seen as a tool not just for geeks and techies, but for everyone” — well, if everyone is old lefty NY Community board members who are in the SL Future Salon LOL. Once again, this is just a NYLS/Democracy Island/Electric Sheep project, not “everyone”, Walker. We’re still quite a little ways from “everyone” getting a private island in SL.
BTW, this format definitely precludes discussions somehow, as I see most people are far too intimidated to post comments or start discussions. It’s the shinyness and velocity, I guess.
Oh, and that bit about the private islands not being SLURLABLE is just amazing! Just…wow!