Sunday, April 20, 2008

Holding class in SL...

Well, no one else was there, but "Mikey08 Market" and I had a lovely chat while sitting on our free bikes (mine was a gift from Mike). Since it was just the two of us, it felt a lot like your basic IM chat, except that we could see and hear when the other was typing, which was helpful, and it felt like I was actually talking with someone who was paying attention. Obviously, he could have been doing anything, but it felt like we were both more "present" for the conversation.

I saved the chat log, but it's five pages long with no spaces or line breaks, so I don't think I'll post it. Suffice it to say, we talked about surveillance, labor, self-determination, code, ethnography, and other stuff. And we wondered where Anne (and everyone else) was. Here we are!

P.S. Anne, I heard this evening that you were there on Sunday (with others?). I wonder why you didn't show up when Mike searched your name? I guess we should have looked around more...sorry! So just like in real life/first life/"meet space," we can miss each other by being in slightly different locations.

1 comment:

Jay Johnson said...

I showed up (late) on Monday eve and found a similar contrast b/w the presence of the avatar and wondering where the mind might be wandering. But, I suppose I don't know where you're mind is going right now and you sure don't know what I was thinking (kittens) when I wrote (left handed pitching) this comment.

The question came up how SL might be beneficial for learning compared to other digital means, with specific respect to response times, multiple folks talking at once. I don't know how to "answer" those concerns, but it was hard for me to follow lines from different screen names and conversation threads. And, I don't know that the spatial representation of the avatar in a "3D" space was all that more useful than a simple chat app.