Second Life and Real Life

March 13, 2008, 12:44 pm
By Andrew C. Revkin
Andy Revkin lectured on sustainability and communication at the real University of Delaware and its synthetic campus on Second Life.
More and more these days, I make video “visits” to colleges to talk about the environment and development, saving time and the environmental and financial costs of travel. But I hadn’t found my way into the completely synthetic universe of Second Life until Wednesday, when I made a real visit to the University of Delaware to talk about journalism, climate and sustainability.
growing list with Second Life cyber-campuses that can be explored by any of the million or so people who populate this parallel universe as avatars.
While I stood in an actual auditorium on campus, live video of my talk was streamed on screens on a cube floating over an artificial amphitheater, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, on the university’s Second Life “island.”
spoken with secondary-school students around the world. Last year, in a climate forum at the United Nations, I talked with students from the borough of Queens to the Arctic (Yellowknife) and the subtropics (Karachi).
More important, they talked with one another. When I heard a girl in Karachi asking the students in Queens what they were doing to make their school greener, I knew something very interesting was happening. Video of the students, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and me is archived online.
Real life, called RL on Second Life, is still the vital underpinning of experience — especially life outside of walls and away from LCD screens.
But virtual experience is clearly a tool that will be a growing part of life from now on.