“…that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion…”
REM lyrics are appropriate, for I HAVE lost my religion. The eerily well-oiled machine that is my employer has decided that it will save a fair bit of coin by carrying out training in, get this, a virtual SECOND LIFE campus.
La resistance
I was apalled by this idea. I was irritated to the max. I was reluctant. And boy, was I ever pissed off at being stuck in the body of a red sportscar (choose avatar in haste, repent at frigging leisure). At my orientation session I drove into furniture, mowed people down, and utterly failed to become humanoid, try as everyone might (turns out I had inadvertently put on some kind of ‘Alpha’ outfit thing which hid my default humanoid basic form). Much time was frittered away scouring SL help and random experimentation. At great length I learned to jetison unwanted things from my form and assume something more work-appropriate.
In short, I wished to revolt… but resistance is futile – there has been such a tremendous investment in this (an entire campus’ worth, in fact)… so I curbed my un-enthusiasm and went along with things.
Virch employees
To their credit, there was much evidence of planning and foresight (not to mention architecture… I’m curious now as to who designed the layout/map/buildings whatever). It was interesting to see that the campus welcome tour included guidelines and notices to the effect that ‘all your behinds are still belong to us, even in here, so y’all better behave, dress appropriately… and don’t be palming off corporate secrets to the nearest badly-rendered pirate or whatever.‘ Er, Noted.
So it seems that if you will extend your corporate existence into the virtual realm, your policies have to go along with. Otherwise you’re paving the way for a faceplant, somewhere along the line.
***
So… am I ready to embrace a new parallel existence in SL? Personally, I can’t get past the polygonal clunkiness of this wanna-be reality. For all my futurism-tinged, singularity-courting, rambling prose… virchdom in it’s current incarnation does not appeal. Maybe when the tech gets more immersive, I might reconsider.
But you know what? Once you learn how to not look like a car, and once you learn how to move around without bumping into things, and once you get a bit more familiar with the controls, it’s not too bad. I can see why they made this investment. And, it has to be said, better to get on the bandwagon while the tech is still evolving, rather than come too late to the party, I s’pose.
Update:
Actually, no. It’s still irritating as hell.