Second Life Could be a Second Chance
Posted on December 19, 2006
Filed Under For Argument's Sake |
I mean to get things right. It’s amazing to report that most people I talk with about Second Life are thin on detail. What is it good for? Oh, simulation, you know. So I wanted to ask a few questions of different scenarios on the off-chance that SL fans would have the answers. Earlier in the week (it’s now Tuesday!) I posted saying I thought there could be ten useful ways Second Life would serve society if we were able to set up think tanks that could do the SIM-like on specific issues.
To date I have had no responses from advocates of the virtual but I’d really like to know. And I’d like IBM et al to get involved.
The people I know who are affected by drugs trafficking and use tell me the worst of it is the extent to which children are forced to become party to the process. A friend had a local drugs dealer call at his house to pick up cash when his son reported a drug deal in the school grounds. He was being asked to pony up for the lost stash. Drugs, apart from being a menace, obviously from complex social networks between users, dealers, parents, social services, the police and criminals that Second Life might be able to simulate. And I can see how it might be reasonable content for TV programming too, though I’m always accused of being half-baked there.
So to point number one. Can we use Second Life to role-play a typical urban abandominium where drug use and trafficking is integral to the fabric of that micro-society? And can we simulate ways of disentangling drugs from normal life and explore the scenarios each attempts generate? That’s be a start on using the 3-D web to explore the real world or maybe it is already happening….
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