Zed Essex On Second Life: If Only It Worked!

I came across a very thoughtful post by Zed Essex which is well worth the read. There are two paragraphs I'll borrow from If only it Actually Worked!!!!:

... Still it's not any worse that the real world I suppose. I think the reason why we get so angry when things don't work here in SL, is because the real world is so messed up, so full of restrictions and barriers. We want, or I dare say NEED SL to be an escape from that.

This is the simple fact that Linden Labs needs to understand. Nobody cares if it's pretty, if they can't walk. Still you know what? I really believe that the Lindens are doing everything they can to make Sl work. I just don't think they are up to the task and frankly I don't see how anyone could be. Just maintaining this virtual world is a herculean task, never mind fixing anything! Now take that one step further, you can barely maintain it, you've got features that have been broken forever now, (recent items jumps to mind) you've got the government telling you all the most popular stuff in the game is illegal, and people actually want things to get BETTER? How dare they? Are they insane?...

That probably explains a lot of the angst when Second Life is not working right, and right does seem to be increasingly a matter of degree these days. As a community, our expectations are that Second Life work. The few, the proud, the premium members - we often hold that up for [w:Linden Lab] to appreciate as well, and are always irked when they don't seem to appreciate that some of us pay for the service. Is that wrong? No, not at all.

What many people are coming to realize in a more qualitative manner is that Second Life is a part of the Internet and inherits a lot of the problems that come with the internet - from straightforward connectivity issues to international Law... and [w:internet governance].

It is really a good post - go read it.

On the other side of the chasm, it certainly was good to hear that [w:ICANN] has some vision into the future of virtual worlds in this regard, though internet governance itself doesn't seem to have really figured it out yet.