Previous |
Next |
October 16, 2007, 10:59 AM ET
Philosopher: Second Life Run by 'Greek Gods'
Peter Ludlow, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto and an enthusiast of virtual reality, accuses managers of virtual worlds, including Linden Lab, the operator of Second Life, of running their worlds erratically in an interview this month with the MIT Press.
“What you get in all of these games is a kind of Greek-god method of running the show. There’s no really set established policy, but they refuse to be completely hands off, too. So they reach in like Greek gods reaching down from Mount Olympus, and they dabble in stuff and screw around and get involved to bail out their friends,” said Mr. Ludlow, aka the avatar Urizenus Sklar. “It would be much better if they just stayed out completely because then there would be an opportunity for users to create their own governance structures.”
Officials at Woodbury University, in Burbank, Calif., may take comfort in Mr. Ludlow’s assessment of Linden Lab. This past summer, the company yanked Woodbury’s digital campus from Second Life, accusing avatars there of harassment. But in an interview this month, Edward Clift, an associate professor and chairman of Woodbury’s communications department, told The Chronicle that the virtual campus was being rebuilt and may return to Second Life early next year.
Mr. Ludlow said the governance of virtual worlds would become an important issue as people spend more of their lives online.
The MIT Press interview was intended to promote Mr. Ludlow’s book, due out this month, that he wrote with Mark Wallace, a freelance journalist. The book is titled The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse.
Mr. Ludlow, who founded the The Second Life Herald (caution: adult content), an online newspaper, is perhaps best known for being kicked out of the virtual world, the Sims Online, after he criticized how its operators, Electronic Arts, ran the metaverse. —Andrea L. Foster
Categories: Virtual-Worlds
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.