Second Life

So, my 9 year old son thinks second life looks pretty cool. He watched the youtube video from SJSU with me. He is all for this technology and already participates in Second Life for kids, or, Club Penguin, for the uninitiated. He's even one of the Penguin "in-world" informants. He has been selected (for his longevity in-world?) to inform about any club members who are being "inappropriate." Specifically, giving out their name, age, sex or inviting people to come visit them. He's a good spy my 9 year old. He's turned in 3 people already. 9 is the best age for informants really - strong sense of right and wrong and fearless in their willingness to call it out. We should all be 9 forever.

I am trying to be very open to this because I think I should be. Honestly, I just don't get it except in cases when you can visually represent a product: a building, a car, an engineering concept, an artistic concept...I am pretty far in the box on this one vis a vis libraries.

What struck me as odd, too, is that many of these second life spaces look pretty much like our 1st life spaces. I wonder why one wouldn't move beyond the 19th century library building facade for example. It's minor but still puzzling. Of course, I don't understand or know enough about this to be too critical, and I would describe myself as more perplexed than critical anyway.

I asked my son to tell me what he likes about the idea of second life. He likes, " that you can walk around, the cool cloud things and the fact that you can talk to people." He also likes it because you can construct things and move things in the ways you want.

This is the future library demographic and he is using Club Penguin now, so, although I am not convinced, he seems like he is.