Only hours after being sworn in for his second term as mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome joined Linden CEO Philip Rosedale in Second Life for a chat about how a virtual world can provide insight and imagination towards shaping real world governance and policy. This gives credence to the argument by Edward Castranova that a) there is a migration to virtual worlds and that b) if people migrate to a new country, the features of that country may be a source of lessons and policy for the “old world”. (More about Castranova’s book soon!)
Massively kindly transcribed the chat and posted the first part today.
Of particular interest were Newsome’s thoughts that:
The gradations, the acuity of the challenge is really what separates countries from countries, and so the opportunity to bring people from all walks of life together in this world, so that we can develop something, a governing structure, where people can live together across those differences, is very meaningful. And very opportunistic as it relates to, now, the real world, the one that I’m trying to govern here in San Francisco, so, taking some of the cues, and taking some of the examples that come out of Second Life, the answer is yes, I think that creates great opportunity as well as great challenge
(Note: Can we please form a collection and get these guys some decent hair? Bad advertising for how “real” SL can feel!)
Second Life as an Extension of the Wiki/Web 2.0 World
I’ve written before about how Second Life, being an open world (as compared to a more goal/level-driven MMORPG) creates a visual and 3-dimensional demonstration of the true power behind Web 2.0. Within the “social Web” I include the mash-up and user-generated content movement seen in music and video production (amongst others), the social connections seen in sites like Facebook, and the rapid sharing, rating and tagging of content seen in applications like Twitter, digg and delicious. Second Life adds a different dimension, namely the third….the sense of presence and identity, and the ability to create conceptual frameworks and objects in three dimensions, opens new realms of collaboration, creativity, sharing, and identity exploration not as possible in the “flat’ social sites.
I’ve also proposed that the success of Second Life will partly be dependent on how well it can adapt and link in to these other applications. It should not be a garden walled off from social sites like Facebook but a natural extension, and if not Second Life then there are a raft of virtual worlds and “mini worlds” that will fill the gap. The ability to easily integrate Facebook APIs within SL, or SL APIs within Facebook (to use a more prominent site merely by way of example, but it could just as easily apply to OpenSocial by Google or any being able to tag sims within SL using delicious) is what will extend the power of this collaboration and sharing of information in a way that extends its utility to a wide range of users.
Is Linden an Organic/Holistic Platform?
Gavin commented in his discussion with Philip (related to location):
By the way, and government can take a cue from that. I mean, we tend to get so top-down so aggregated in terms of our approach, so siloed in terms of our mentality, it’s a wonder why government keeps costing more and more but doesn’t necessarily deal with the changing face and realities of the new world. And so I think that you are right on not to look to us to set an example in the literal sense as a government, but as a community to look at that more organically and holistically.
I’d suggest that the Mayor could just as easily have used this as an argument to Linden Labs itself. To ask the question whether the Linden approach is too siloed, too top-down, and not reliant enough on the organic and holistic nature of the community and its relation to other communities and sources of growth.
But overall it’s encouraging to see that only a few hours into his term that the Mayor came to Second Life to begin an exploration on what best practices SL might have for real world governance.
Role of Education
In a collaborative world, SL makes a visible, 3D argument for the power of collaboration, organic project development, user-driven content – all the hallmarks of the Web 2.0 world that have the music, movie and other industries manning the barricades. I’d argue that the age of the feminine corporation may be upon us – less hierarchy and more emotion, sharing, support, giving, and co-creation. The Mayor is wise to visit a world where these principles are embodied because the nature of the platform doesn’t hold the same preconceived notions of where value is created as the Sony’s of the world would try to advance.
These forms of collaboration and exploration are going to be successfully pursued in the domains of creativity, education, science, and by companies seeking new value-creation streams. In Philip’s recent blog post, he made this point quite ably:
In reality, the majority of the business use we are seeing now in SL is focused on meetings and collaboration, and is rapidly increasing as more companies discover the efficiencies and unique capabilities that working together in a virtual world can offer. As I’ve said in the past, I think Second Life is going through a natural evolution which mirrors other new communications mediums, as individual early adopter usage shifts to include education and work collaboration. As far as we can tell, education and work use is now growing at a larger relative rate than the overall growth of SL, so we can expect to see lots more of it in-world.
As much as I would love to see the user numbers continue their increase, I think Philip’s right in paying closer attention to stability numbers and hours in world. I would rather believe that educators are spending time in world working out new models for education (such as SLoodle) than a bunch of newbies running around an insipid CSI New York build wondering where the “shoot” button is on their keyboard. The educators and the companies looking to SL for new collaborative work models are the groups that will fuel a deeper pool of resources around maximizing SL for collaboration and creativity. I would rather have that than 100 beautiful (vacant) brand builds any day.
As the mayor said:
And it’s not just a K through 12 education, it’s pre-K education. It’s people that are graduating from high school that are looking for secondary education, and that might not necessarily mean community college, or participating in a state system, or a traditional four-year university, but maybe vocational training, and how can technology be component to advancing the vocational needs of members of the community that are tailored to their unique skillset. And that’s the opportunity. I mean, everything, I mean, I was talking to someone the other day, had a great chance to spend some time with the head of Genentech, and the person that discovered the Human Genome. And we started talking about how pharmacies are gonna evolve in this country, and you’re not gonna get what everybody else gets, you’re gonna get something based upon your own unique DNA. And how things are being tailored and specifically created for you. That’s exactly what you guys are doing, you’ve evolved this construct, this three-dimensional construct, and boy, isn’t that a perfect example of where education can go in this country.
