Virtual World, You Say?

I have been waiting patiently for Second life to work on my PC with Windows Vista for weeks now. Unfortunately it did not help to wait for the drivers to be updated. Instead I borrowed my girlfriend’s computer for a little while and tested Second life. After some weeks looking forward to enter the world of second life, I finally entered the virtual world. Within moments, my expectations were crushed! (: P) I tried to optimize the graphic settings in the program, but still, it is so darn ugly. We are now in the year of 2007 and I was sort of expecting more of today's technology than I was introduced with. The computer is very fast and has one of the better graphic cards for laptop computers these days and a very fast Internet connection (24mb), but that does not help. The world looked awful. Anyway, I kept on playing. It took me a while to understand how to leave the training course, but when I once did I met a bunch of people trying to communicate with me. Most of them were avatar chicks, but as well some misformed creatures that wanted to have virtual sex with me.

I kept on travelling through a couple of cities. The more I went on, the more I experienced some really cool things, for example, a rock concert, art exhibitions, museums, schools and much more. Nonetheless, what fascinates me is that even though the world is virtual and there are hardly any boundaries, yet this virtual world is quite dull. For example, why present art in old fashion ways as we do in "reality" instead of playing with the medium to make art even more exciting which in turn may attract a broader audience.

Anyway, before I started using Second Life I had the impression of the world as being very beautiful, exciting and liveful. instead I got a world that seem to be put together by some "computer geeks" (Linden team) that tried to create a virtual world similar to the one described in Stephenson's "Snow Crash," which they obviously did not succeed with. Even so, the idea is very interesting, but so far it appears that these so called "computer geeks" put the world together in a hurry and with too much money controlling their ambitions. For me, Second Life is an even worse version of a simple chat program. I don't want to spend time in a world that is even more boring and ugly than our own "reality.” Hopefully in a short time I will be proved otherwise.