Public Works Group Blog

I often read about the complaints in Second Life about the development that occurs in the “mainland” area of this metaverse. For those of you who are not familiar with the term “mainland,” Second Life has two types of land. Mainland is the virtual land that is owned and terraformed by Linden Labs and sold to individuals who can then subdivide and sell this land to others. (Much in the same manner that the United States created the Public Land System and sold land patents to generate income for the federal government.) The other type is estate land that is sold as a full sim or island with an area of 65,536 square meters. Private islands must be ordered and owned by an individual who then has the power to terraform the land to suit a particular purpose. The owner can rent this land to others or keep it for private use and always has control over what can be built on that island. However, an owner cannot subdivide this island and sell off parcels – only the entire island can be sold to another individual.

 (The photo below shows a typical private island development. Note the well-organized layout, attractive build, streets, public places, and landscaping. There is a distinct lack of objectionable objects and structures.)

The problem with mainland is that there are no subdivision, zoning, or building regulations, and people in Second Life are upset about what ends up getting built next to or near them. Now, I know that all of you who work with these issues in real life could have predicted that this would happen. Don’t we all hear it everyday at work, even with all the rules and regulations that we have in place. The bottom line is that everyone wants to do what they want to do, and they get upset and irate if the rules prevent them from doing it. But when their neighbor does something that may be allowed but that they don’t like, they demand a new rule to prevent it. This goes back to the challenge in our country of trying to ensure everyone the “pursuit of happiness” idea from our Declaration of Independence. What happens when your pursuit conflicts with mine. That is the eternal struggle faced by our politicians – who do they legislate for? Linden Labs has decided not to try to decide that – the pursuit of happiness is not guaranteed in Second Life.

(The next photo shows a typical mainland development where parcels have been subdivided into such small sizes that they only support ads. Although there is a public road here, there is no distinct route and there are images and builds that may be objectionable to some.)

This new frontier has been compared to the Wild West of the United States in how it is developing; people build what they want. If someone doesn’t like it, they try to use their own ingenuity to either ignore it or drive it away. (Of course, in the Wild West, the use of firearms seem to take care of a lot of these problems.) Linden Labs has created the ultimate experiment that illustrates how people will plan, develop, build, and inhabit their world when limited only by imagination, money, and time. This type of experiment could never have been done in real life. And now all of us who work with zoning, planning, and building in real life can watch as this experiment unfolds. We can observe the behaviors and outcomes that result from this type of development and learn from it. There are many insights that could come out of a professional analysis of development in Second Life. How these types of behaviors led to our own rules and regulations. What happens when all rules and regulations are suspended. How people attempt to resolve problems when they have no government to rely on. Perhaps there are some solutions here that can be implemented by those of us dealing with this on a daily basis.

Maybe next time that person comes in to complain about how her neighbor put up a bright pink fence, I can suggest a prim wall with a scene of her choice….

Although I have been enjoying the use and exploration of Second Life, I have to admit that it is beginning to make my RL  a bit more frustrating than usual. Aside from the usual perks of SL that simply cannot be implemented in RL  such as hovering names above avatars (great for people like me who have trouble remembering everyone’s name – particularly when looks can be changed so drastically) and the ability to teleport between destinations, there are many capabilities in SL that can implemented in RL to enhance or improve RL activities or tasks.

I recently attended a seminar given by the FHWA at the local DOT in Ottawa, Ill., which covered the design and implementation of roundabouts. Although the speakers gave an excellent presentation, I could not help but dwell on how SL would have made this class so much better.

First of all, classes and conventions held in SL do not require anyone to travel outside of their home or place of business. This provides the obvious benefits of not having all of the attendees use energy resources to get to the class. This also allows more people to attend even if they had a short conflict on that day – something which would have normally prevented them from being there that day. If attending in SL, they can easily take off for a short time to take care of this task and then return to class without causing a disruption.

Next, the class material which was presented through a powerpoint presentation could have easily been shown in SL on one of the many tools that have been created for this purpose. The third-party voice capabilities offer the opportunity to add voice, and of course, soon voice will be a regular feature on the grid. The books which were handed out to supplement the class presentation could have been mailed to us prior to the class.

SL also offers the ability for attendees to ask questions during the presentation, and if someone missed a certain point, they have the ability to IM a fellow attendee for clarification without having to disrupt class.

Also, If the FHWA had a permanent site in SL, an area could be set up to store these presentations, so an attendee could go back later to clear up any point or question that may have been missed.

Of course, all of you who have attended classes in SL already are fully aware of these benefits. In the case of this particular seminar, the ability in SL to build and interact with the topic of our class – a roundabout – would have greatly enhanced the class. Although roundabouts are widely used in England and other parts of our country, most of us in the class, which was held in Illinois, were not familiar with roundabout design or function. All of us would have benefited to have the chance to leave the class and visit an actual roundabout built in SL and then drive it with our virtual cars. The FHWA could have signed the roundabout and textured the pavement with the suggested striping to show us visually how a proper design looks. The agency could also have built one or more with design flaws and let us drive them to better illustrate why those flaws must be avoided in our designs. Then this exhibit could have been left in place for a while so that others  could benefit from the presentation.

I have to admit that I could not help but try to convince one of the presenters of these benefits and encouraged him to check out SL. But so far he has not been able to visit so that I can demonstrate the features of SL. I can only hope that with all of the other federal agencies setting up virtual spaces, that the FHWA won’t be far behind. And maybe the next time I need to go to a class, I’ll be able to bring my virtual Nissan.

So, my public works center in Second Life is in disarray – It all started after I attended the International Technology Expo (ITE) in Second Life on Silicon City. I had gone with my alt to listen to a builder’s panel discussion about meeting a client’s expectations in Second Life. One of the panelists, Keystone Bouchard, is the person who inspired me to enter Second Life when I saw his presentation of this virtual world at Autodesk University in November of 2007. Well, yesterday’s presentation was no different – his comments, and those of the other panelists, about building in Second Life - drove me to immediately return to my center and start “renovating.”

I was happily building away when I heard a strange sound, looked around, and noticed pictures flying through the air near my center. I send an IM to the sim owner, Doeko Cassidy, who immediately responded by showing up and removing the offending device creating these pictures. So my efforts at improving my center were interrupted by some jerk causing problems for no good reason – in a way I guess that is a lot like real life. 

Well, I decided to leave my center for a while to look for objects I needed to decorate the place and by the time I returned, half of the place was inaccessible – the island was offline. Now today, Sunday, the whole island is completely gone!

Because I have the center spanning two sims, I still have a portion of the building available, and I have copies of everything that was in the other sim except for a television. But I am left wondering if the island and building will be returned and why it was taken off line. I guess that is the essence of the problems with Second Life – you can spend hours creating and working on your space to have it all disappear in a flash with absolutely no explanation. Can you imagine a whole block of your community disappearing into nothing and not having to address this with your citizens? Well, all of you in public works could imagine the scene at city hall if an incident like that could actually happen. In Second Life, things disappear all the time, and it seems that no one is ever given an explanation of why. I have faith that with backups the island can be restored but still cannot help buy wonder why it happened and wish that someone would at least give the “owners” of land on that sim an explanation.

In any event, I am still in renovation mode and will work on the remaining portion of the center in order to provide an even better resource for those who are able to visit the center. I have also set up a display for an event I plan to hold through the month of May so look for the upcoming announcement.