Long Way – Point Eight – Courses for Newbies

“Knowledge is power.”

We learn ourselves during the whole life, whether we want or no. Sometimes it is a spontaneous thing, at other time we have to do it. It means we have to attend some educational institution, which is usually a school. It begins sometime in a kindergarten and continues at basic school right to higher variant of education. Well, after that there are other educational methods like a self-study, courses or a university of the third age.

The Second Life environment is like created for that to organize courses, tutorials, meetings, etc. After coming of a voice chat into SL, the education moved to another qualitatively higher level. Well, even if phraseology and speech style of some avatars was not correct or standard. By the way, do you know that when Linden Lab announced the implementation of voice chat into SL, the big protests appeared, also demonstrations? Nevertheless, in August 2007 you can communicate with other avatars using your own voice.

So today, there is no problem to use voice chat by different activities in SL. 8th March 2008 was an important day for me. I gave a lecture at the first course from the series of the lectures for the newbies in our community in city Bohemia. Of course it was without voice chat only with text chat. There were purely rational reasons for that. Some people did not have installed voice chat and did not want it or were not able to use it. Because of my text writing, the whole lecture was hard to lecture preparation and management. Unfortunately, I have no any pictures form this time, but the lecture room in Telefónica O₂ building was rather full. And actually what about talked I, respectively wrote I, there? Here is the handout of this lecture for interest:

1. What Second Life (SL) is?
1.1. General presentation of this phenomenon.
1.2. History.
1.3. Definition of some names.

2. SL enviroments.
2.1. Terrain – sims, islands, space, area, objects.
2.2. Avatar – human beings, possibilities.
2.3. Communication – languages, media.

3. Entrance.
3.1. SL main portal.
3.2. SL client.
3.3. Security.

4. What can I do in SL?
4.1. Earning – money, camping, surveys, Earn2Life, job.
4.2. Communication with avatars.
4.3. Entertainment.
4.4. Objects creation. Building.

5. Ethic and behavior in SL
5.1. Question of avatar age in real life.
5.2. Reciprocal behavior among avatars.
5.3. Weapons, violence, bans.

6. Premium Account

This series of courses continued with other topics later. And as it is seen today, some of them are repeating because of big interest, for example, course about scripting.

Actually, I am realizing now that I could reincarnate me only for image into avatar shape, which I had by this lecture.

Lag

It is nice sunny morning and I am again speeding to Prague after long time. Again, it is a comfort of international train Eurocity Carl Maria von Weber, which is going from nearby Vienna, through my loved Moravia, then through Czech basin to Prague and later to Berlin and it terminates in Ostseebad Binz in neighboring Germany.

After the initial difficulties caused by usual delays, I am inside and I am fully enjoying drive in the first class and the second breakfast in dining car. The insolated landscape full of the fields is changing behind the train window. The fields have already yielded their fruits and there is only a contrast of brown (fields) and still green (trees and grass). It means that summer has no ended and autumn did not approach yet. We are just leaving Moravia due to the arrival to the Ceska Trebova station.

Since I get out not until ion Prague, I travel the pure distance 262 km = 262,000 m (162.80 mi = 286 526.68 yds). For instance, you can imagine that it is the distance of about 1,203 sims in Second Life. However, it is valid only in that case that we are moving along edges of squares in on direction. The question is where we would finish. One thing is certain; the teleport would take several seconds unlike RL. There we have to take into account time about 2 hours 48 minutes.

Somebody says in one Luc Besson’s movie: “Time plays no role.” Unfortunately, this premise is not valid either in RL or SL. We are dependent on time. Even we made it up ourselves. Time does not follow from any physical laws or any physical properties of our world or other worlds.

The next moment, the train stopped somewhere in a wasteland. There are any rails nearby. They run somewhere in other place, where time has stopped maybe. These rails are really there, but they are full of weed. Hell! Delay is increasing by another 20 minutes. It is totally already 50 minutes! Oh, we are not alone in this situation. The Super City Express Pendolino has stopped nearby us. Then we all are lost in the wasteland.

After that, it occurred to me that the preceding situation is an analogy with world of SL. Surely it is a lag! Tom Boellstorf written in his book:

… small talking about lag is like talking about the weather in rl [1].

Lag exited because Second Life, like all “massively multiply” virtual worlds during my fieldwork, was based on a “client-server” architecture, where most of the virtual world was housed on servers rather than the personal computers of residents [2].

It is therefore incorrect to assume that “everything in the new computer world is temporary and fleeting. … Time is now a resource, not a reference point.” [3]

I cannot move from my place, either in time or space. I am as a newbie – absolutely bare. I have nothing. I don’t know, what is happening. How it is working. Is there any hope?

Yes, it is. Courses for newbies.

References

1. T. Boellstorf: Coming of Age in Second Life An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 102
   
2. ibid, p. 103
   
3. ibid, p. 105

(It was written down in dining car of EC Carl Maria von Weber on 09.09.2009. It was served Prague’s omelet with roasted potatoes. Further, it was served Chardonnay, a sacramental wine from Archbishop's cellars in Kroměříž)

Long Way – Point Seven – Support

Nobody is omniscient and nobody also knows everything. Second Life is very wide and structured world. That is precisely why it is not simple to orientate inside for the first time. Of course, basic (advanced) knowledge to work with PC, Internet, or playing MMORPG right to knowledge of foreign language, mainly English, this all is the big advantage at newbie entrance into SL.

However, what about the newbies those are not adept in above mentioned things? This is an example, where I remembered an advance of my high school professor of chemistry. I follow this advice from my professor whole my life. And what does the advice say? “Student does not know then student consults something.” Since somebody already answered our question sometime. This question already was solved somewhere. Before I ask, then:

1. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
   
2. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
   
3. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
   
4. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
   
5. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
   
6. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.
   

Application in SL is surely possibly, maybe with one exception. Item 1 unambiguously covers different web sites, blogs and discussion forums about SL.

Item 1 can be linked with items 2 and 3, i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 = www.secondlife.com, so it is an official web. It offers also SL official blogs and mainly illustrative videotutorials that it is possible to see directly on web, on YouTube or to download to PC for later replay.

Item 4 is definitely interesting. I myself have used it several times. There is nothing like you yourself can find something and it works! Well, it is fantastic! But, you must not abandon it just by the first fiasco. For example, in scientific research, if you reach a blind alley that it means fiasco. No! It is unambiguously positive result, which says that this is not that way. It needs to analyze the whole procedure and find a mistake.

Item 5 is also important. But even if you ask good friend, you have to ask her/him right to do not look as an idiot. It would pass by your good friend, but others will consider you to be a looser.

Item 6 is perhaps for programmers, e.g. in the case of scripting fo SL objects.

Whole this thing is applicable to the Technical Support Service that works at our sim in city Bohemia. Every evening, one team member (inclusive me) sweats there and tries to answer also question that are primitive and easy, even if the answers can be found elsewhere. In spite of that the team members answer with a big long-suffering.

In conclusion, I would like to recommend some article on the web – How to Ask Question the Smart Way. It is probably focused to bit other subject, but it is fully applicable to asking in SL. You can find it here. I recommend reading it.