DISQUS

Rich · 2 years ago

Churbuck states, “There is nothing to do in Second Life except, pardon my bluntness, try to get laid.”
Interesting... I've never seen that as my sole purpose (or even an interest) in Second Life endeavors. There are entire cultures built around technology in SL. There are scripters, builders, artists, musicians, audio engineers, video engineers, education programs, web consultants, etc. I know of entire community groups that only discuss and work in computer related technologies within Second Life.
If one can only find that the sole purpose is to get laid, is it possible that is the only goal that one had in mind upon entering this virtual world environment?

Hugh Toppe · 2 years ago

I think there are people at IBM who get what Second Life and other immersive virtual environments are about, but they are not ones that appear in this article. If you think it is about technology (a 3D interface), then go back to VRML and prepare to fail again. Any real-world retailer who thinks that consumers want to slog through 3D malls and look at obscured views of packages on 3D shelves has it wrong and will not be successful in Second Life or anywhere else. Regarding "openness", Second Life is as open and flexible as any other environment, with additional interoperability features about to be announced. It does have an extremely frustrating (and possibly even fatal) quality of crashing regularly. But likely any other environment that had ramped up to 40,000 concurrent users in a short period of time would have its share of glitches. The growth rate is about 20% per month (doubling every six months). There is more than $1M per day being spent in the Second Life economy, but it is not people buying Thinkpads or real-world goods, and not likely to be so, no matter which virtual world you choose.

Blovio · 2 years ago

Not that I have an opinion on this, but...
Second Life is a flash in the pan. I know marketers at Sun who have tried similar experiments (Jonathan Scwartz's JavaOne keynote simulcast in SL, for example). The net-net: zilch. SL is not a plac to try to conduct enterprise business. Perhaps it's a place for consumer brands like Coke, Pepsi and Hillary Clinton to reach out, but for the marketing folks at IBM, Sun, and elsewhere to try to bask in the reflected glow of all the SL hype, shame on them. They should have known better. Their money was wasted on cynical efforts to tie their stars to what is soon to be roadkill on the info superhighway. SL will be a victim of the next big thing, Gen Y will move on, and the marketers will scamper quickly behind them, trying to be cool. All the while, squandering shareholders' money. Oh well...

John LaBouff · 2 years ago

an absolutely absurd number of typos for a supposedly journalistic publication

Matt Marshall · 2 years ago

yowza, grammar corrected!

dprawel · 2 years ago

SL is a neat social experiment, but little else. The members of SL are not people who are looking to buy anything bigger than a breadbox (cost or size), and have little money to buy much of anything. They are there to socialize. There is a big future in 3D and n-D but if one wants to buy sneakers, why not just go to Nike.com?
My $0.02...

Sundog Sakai · 2 years ago

I doubt very much that Lee Dierdorf speaks for IBM. Not to downplay Mr. Dierdorf but there's no shortage of VP's at IBM. In the end what speaks volumes is IBM's CEO's statement that they are spending over $100 million on Second Life and related Virtual world technologies.

As for Mr. Churbuck, well, I think that Rich cut to the heart of that pretty effectively.

What really matters is that 3D worlds like Second Life take the focus off of the products being pushed and put it on the interactions between members of communities. Big companies like IBM have a lot to fear from communities that they don't control.

This cat is out of the bag... SL is doubling in size every 6 months and there's not much that can be done to stop it. SL has open sourced their client app and will open source their server soon. SL is to the web as television and radio were to print.

Get with the times and stop taking pot shots at thing you don't understand.

Artist3d · 2 years ago

It is all a matter of perspective and nothing beats the 3D internet for meeting and talking in real time and with that sense of presence you get when you are standing right next to a person 3000 miles away from the comfort of your home computer! Active Worlds with over 700 3D theme worlds has been quietly growing real virtual realities for over 10 years and Second Life is but a wonderful commercial off-shoot of that original community-minded venture. It is all moving towards global networking on a scale of real-time interactivity hitherto unimagined!!! Watch and learn. The 2D Internet will become merely a glorified Yellow Pages used as a reference from within the 3D Universes of tomorrow.

Saturday Post · 2 years ago

When David Charbruck of Lenovo says: “There is nothing to do in Second Life except, pardon my bluntness, try to get laid.” he belies the fact that David Charbruck couldn't find anything to do in Second Life besides trying to get laid. Good luck with that, David.