Second Life has gone from a computer geek's dream to a social network and now its become communication between educators and business people but where does it go wrong? When does the communication run into problems and maybe even cause some problems of its own. While I have not used Second Life as a serious communication device, I can speculate on the possible problems that one could run into from my own limited experience.
Maybe this is because I'm a newbie to the program but using the voice application I ran into some problems. The first was trying to talk to another avatar. I could not seem to find the keys to turn on the microphone for SL and ended up having to type while a French man spoke to me. Once I had found the voice control I had to hold down the keys, which for the life of me, I cannot remember, in order to keep the microphone. Overall the voice controls were difficult to find, use, and evidently, remember.
The only other problem I can foresee in Second Life would be a question of etiquette. If all the participants in a conversation are typing than the chances of them overlapping in quite high. Especially if someone is talking and the other is typing, the one talking has full advantage of the other and can run the conversation to their benefit. But this is not new, maybe to SL, but not new to conversation, as people have always seen the benefit of over running another person's side of the argument, just look at political debates. This is not a problem that the makers of SL can solve but rather something the users can control; play by our rules of etiquette or we won't play with you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I have not written a "how to" for voice, but it's not too hard to trigger the mic so you don't have to hold down the hot key.
ReplyDeleteStill, many SLers prefer Skype for conversing (as do players in some online games).
One etiquette point: at public meetings, I've learned that some SLers prefer the typing-hands animation to be on, so everyone can see who is about to make a point, in order to wait to make their own comments.