Just what is Second Life?

Given the blog topic, it’s a fairly important piece of context.

For the unfamiliar, Second Life is a virtual world run by Linden Lab; it’s divided into regions, each a location that can hold a maximum number of people (lets’ call it 50 for ease of reading), and the space is greenfield. For brevity, most refer to the universe as SL, and reality as RL (Real Life) or FL (First Life).

Technically speaking, it’s all served from the United States, and at time of writing it’s all only one datacenter (soon I think to be moved to an Amazon region but essentially the same thing); here’s hoping they have decent disaster recovery strategies…

Each region reaches from -40 to 4000 metres, and is arbitrarily sliced into parcels from a map-down view. Within certain paid-for constraints, the rest is up to you. You build what you want to build, out of prims and mesh that you either design & upload, say in Blender, or buy from other residents from the global Marketplace. Since you can place at arbitrary heights, you can have anything from full cities to multiple skyboxes. There are almost no predefined rules; sculpting terrain, a customisable day/night cycle, and legal rules over what is permitted in what region (hence the various General, Moderate & Adult ratings).

The Marketplace, and in-world stores, are what makes SL the going concern that it is. Just as with real life, looking good costs money, and since it’s a virtual world & not a game, the marketplace is all about what in gaming terms would be considered cosmetics – the buildings, scripted objects, clothes, etc. that turns empty flat land into a viable structure filled with life. One other fundamental difference is that it’s all user content (though intellectual property strictly resides with Linden Labs) and provided you don’t infringe copyright, you’re free to make real money from the process.

Why spend time here? Why go to a virtual world at all?

Well, the more detailed answers are in the various blog posts, but the short version is creative & emotional potential. SL is a miraculous place. We can be anything; explore any concept we wish. I’ve seen those unable to walk dance with their partner in tears of joy. I’ve sat with schizophrenics thrilled to find a place they can be themselves. It’s a meeting of minds, perhaps even potentially free of masks, if one gets all idealistic.