Evaluation of Artefact 3: Seond life

To consider the real effect of on-line community on people who do actually extensivley use it I decided to join the social “world” Second Life.

It wasn't such an uplifting experience as described on the site but I did learn a lot about interesting factors of on-line and virtual communities. I spent the majority of my time in Second life trying to find people who were engaging and interesting to talk to. I found most of the people who were members were in fact active in Second Life for the same reasons as many of the other social networks (promotion, money making, chit chat).

The majority of users were older people which was surprising but makes sense. There is also a big separation of users just like in real world – there are users that want to meet people of similar interests and socialise but there are also people who abuse the network or engage in acts that aren't generally deemed acceptable. A lot like other social networks SL has been commercially exploited, this is again a corresponding factor that is share by popular social events in the real world. In fact SL is almost an accurate Virtual Reality of the real world – with one worrying difference. The fact that you can physically see the person you communicate with leaves a huge level of mistrust – something that SL seem to except many commenting the fact that their appearance age etc. inside SL is completely different. With this in mind you can never believe 100% of anything said or seen in SL.

I tried to discover whether users felt that SL could actually break down Real World community and contact with people or whether it merely filled a gapped that already existed for people who were not socially inept. Most thought it depended on the person and so you cannot answer the question – most members did not think SL broke down RL (but this is maybe expected seen as they are members) but thought SL just brings more people together just the same as Facebook etc.
In my opinion it is probably better than face book and Myspace – this is because you do actually meet new people and not just relate to your RL social network on-line. However the negatives of SL are far more extreme and perhaps more socially dangerous than the others. More addictive, more scope for anti-social behaviour, more breeding for negative social views, not as passive communication so a lot more engrossing. But these negatives do only apply to a minority, which in reality is the same as the RL.

For those genuinely looking for new friendships SL is a good tool – but is also a tool for those wishing to escape reality and re-create themselves sometimes for inappropriate behaviour. I don't think governing them more strictly on-line is the answer as that implies that these social networks are reality – they are not – the governing needs to be done in our real world society, if society understands what is acceptable and what is not, then that should carry into VR. It could also be argued that SL could distract some people from carrying out their wring behaviour in RL!

Some pics from second life.

EVALUATION OF PRACTIONERS:

The first of the practioners I have looked at are Zetia productions. These are a duo of music producers from nottingham. I have had the pleasure of working with these producers on personal music ventures and their style of Hip Hop music is very original and elcetic. I felt they were valuable to look at as practioners as i'm familiar with their work and know that they use a great range of production methods to deliver their exceptional blend of underground music.

see: www.myspace.com/zetiafamilia

The second practioners I have looked at are the Cohen brothers. I have been a fan of their films for a long time with big favourites such as "The big Lebowski" and "O brother where art thou" their new film "no country for old men" was not a dispapointment. The stylistic approach to their films is something I would love to emulate in my own work - or if I were to venture in Directing for film.

"Owing a heavy debt to film noir and other film styles of the past, the Coen brothers' films combine dry humor with sharp irony and shocking visuals, most often in moving camera shots. The Coens prefer not to put the opening credits at the very beginning of the film. The Coens are also amongst the few contemporary filmmakers who have shown a great affection for the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, and have incorporated their influences with varying degrees of subtlety, ranging from entire movies in the screwball mode like The Hudsucker Proxy and Intolerable Cruelty to occasional fast-talking wacky characters like Steve Buscemi's cameo in Miller's Crossing. Their style of characterisation creates a world in which even characters with small speaking parts seem to have exaggerated traits or characteristics. This can be attributed to the settings of many of the films (for example the weird and wonderful characters in The Big Lebowski do not seem out of place in the many niche communities of LA). "

In the latest film I found it really refreshing to engage in a film that did not stuff itself full of cheesey dialogue and fake emotion filled music. The film lacked both completly which really allows you to watch and digest the visual masterpiece they bring to their films.

The third practioners I have looked at recently are graffiti and artists OXYEN THIEVES.

These guys are collective of street artists and illustrators from Nottingham. They recently had an exhibition titled "Fat people are harder to kidnap". It was showed various black and white illustartions and canvas paintings done by each member of the crew. I am good friends with these artists and have been a keen fan of the street art and urban graffiti they have done over the years. The main member of the group Kid30/Smallkid is a well respected artist across the UK and also does workshops for young people similar to those who I teach. I have chosen him as a practioner to show because he has given me alot of help in my career as a tutor and is someone I respect as a self made artists - something I hope to achieve.

Small kid took part in a "draw off" artist battle in london.

you can see their designs all over Nottingham city or visit www.smallkid.co.uk

SAMPLE FROM PDP WORK:


Name: Ed Walsh
Address: Flat 3
Merrivale Court
Mapperly Park
NG3 5DL
D.O.B: 22/10/85

Profile
I am a hard working, self motivated and responsible individual with an outgoing personality and excellent communication skills. I enjoy meeting challenges and seeing them through, whilst remaining confident and good-humoured under pressure. I adapt well to new situations and am able to work well as a team member.

Education

2004-Present Nottingham Trent University, NottinghamBa(Hons) Multimedia
1997 – 2004 Caerleon Comprehensive School, Newport
10 GCSE’s
3 A-Levels
1 AS level

Previous Employment

2007 – Present Stone Soup Project
At this community based charity company I work as a tutor and mentor to young people with problematic educational backgrounds and learning difficulties. This job has been the most rewarding to date. I regulary give life advice to young people and see them change from bad to good. This has given me a real sense of responsibility as working with children is not something to be taking likely. The environment I work in is also testing. The children have extreme behavioural issues and personal problems which means everyone has to be approached differently in order to reach them and help them discover passions that will help them succeed in life. My communication skills have improved greatly since at this job, I now know how to speak on a level with people that many organisations find it impossible.

2006 Rescue Rooms Nottingham
Here I worked in a kitchen preparing and cooking food for customers and bands playing at the venue. It was a very pressure intense job as I was on my own in a kitchen and often had orders exceeding 45. This job was again a chance to develop my organising skills as lack of organisation meant I would fail to meet the expectations. I found it invaluable in developing my working under pressure skills and found I did perform well under the pressure. I left the job due to its late hours that effected my studies. This was a positive move showing that I am able to shift my responsibilities to meet priorities.

2006 – present Ambush Promotions
This is a company that I set up in January 2006. Following the success of working for Detonate promotions I took the skills learnt to develop my own events company. Since its establishment we have organised over 30 events and successfully sustain the company into all aspects of event
organisation and management.

2004/2005 Detonate Promotions
I did promotional work for detonate club night. My duties include placing promotional material in and around the city area and organising a street team to do more promotional work. I was giving a lot of responsibilities in this role as the promotion of the event was key to its success. I developed a lot of skills from this job, this helped to move on set up my own event company.

2004 – 2004 Ocean Night Club Nottingham
I worked as a member of the restaurant team which involves mainly bar work. I did also get moved around to the club bars, which was good bar experience under such a busy environment.

2001 – 2004 Celtic Manor Hotel and Resort, Newport
I worked as a silver service waiter, bar staff and golf club staff member at this five star hotel. I was an extremely valued member of the team and worked on high profile occasions such as serving PM Tony Blair and Prince Charles. The environment of the resort allowed me to develop the skills of communicating with people from areas of life unlike my own. I quickly moved up the ranks and was constantly in charge of wedding and conference functions – this not only tested my leadership skills but also showed my how to handle responsibilities.

Extra Curricular Interests
A lot of my spare time is taken up by running my company Ambush Promotions. This has given me focus and a real sense of direction in to what career paths I may go into. Most of my other activities I have tried to relate to the work I do for Ambush/University/Stone soup. I make music in my spare time and I am part of a music group which performs live, this is linked to Ambush and the work I do as a tutor. I am currently in full time education and have two jobs – this means I do not get much social time (I work 5 days a week and university 2) but when or if I do I like to do activities that most enjoy (the cinema, music nights etc).
A strength that I have developed to maintain that I am always active in a positive direction is tie my extra curricular activities with what I do in education or at work. This gives me real direction and is also vital to understanding where I fit in society.

Strengths
By far my biggest strengths are organisation and communication, this is reflected in the jobs I have and what I currently do in and out of education.
I have a real passion for the things I do and like assert myself fully on any task taken, no matter its size or importance. My work experience has allowed me to really develop holding responsibility. I am constantly in charge of decision making and carrying out tasks that require trust from those setting them. From this I have found myself a natural leader in teams and groups, being able to motivate those around to achieve.

Weaknesses
I would say that my weaknesses are getting to carried away with things and taking to much on. As I mentioned earlier I am very passionate, this sometimes blinds me from seeing new or different ways to approach tasks, I tend to stick to my original goal and keep trying to pursue it even if sometimes a re-think is needed. However I do feel I am a quick learner, because I am young I feel that it is the right time to sustain my passion.
Also taking to much on. I am extremely good at organising so I never let one thing shadow commitments to another, this point is more to my own personal health. I sometimes think I engage in too many responsibilities and tasks which does leave me tired and often stressed. Again I don't feel this is too much of a problem at my age – I believe that when you are young you must push yourself so achieve a standard you're content with when you get older.

Second Life,
Artefact 3: Report and Evaluation

To consider the real effect of online community on people who do actually extensivley use it I decided to join the social “world” Second Life.

“Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.
From the moment you enter The World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.

You'll also be surrounded by the creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.
The Market Place currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.”

Day 1:
First thing is first you have to become a member of SL (as it is known in the online world). I am really sceptical about the Internet and all the online communication/social groups so this wasn't an easy pill to swallow, further more I hate online forms to fill in and this site had a lot. After signing up for account I now had to install the program needed for SL, again not something I love doing but I had to soldier on. This took about 2hours in total and once I opened it my computer crashed so I though I would give up for the day and go an join the RL (thats the Real World for SL users).

Day 2:
Second day on Second life. Today was the day I would get to grips with my new world – or so I thought! Firstly, after loading, I had to design my character. That is to say his name and skijn colour, all new starters look the same with the same clothes etc obviously men and women have a different preset but it is quite strange when you get dumped into this little island and everyone is the same! I thought that you would be able to design the image and design of your character but later found that this comes at a price. Seems like most things inside SL aren't virtual at all, money is valued just as much here as in the RL. In my SL inexperience I thought you would just jump straight into the world, however you are first transported to a “tutorial island” this is where you get to grips with the tools of SL. Rather than follow the rules I hung round the portal area where new people appear, I wanted to just get on with my task in hand and bother people into telling me their RL dilemas that have forced them into the strange world of SL.

I meet a guy from Essex who's Real Name is Adam. He told me that he joined because his “girlfriend spent a lot of time on here and want to see what all the fuss is about”. I imediatley thought this was strange, this person was in a relationship in the RL but both him a his girlfriend have transended themselves to a virtual one. I asked him if they would meet up on SL together or were they just exploring solo, he told me that they probably would meet up in SL but I got the impression ( as much as you can though text speech) that he wasn't to keen on the whole online life and perhaps was checking out his girlfriends intentions. This was interesting to me to find that this man valued SL as almost a real world where he could mistrust his girlfriend just like RL. This is itself a strange way to look at how extensively users consider SL as a “real” domain, to what extent do people actually engage in here!? I left Adam only to spin around in circles a lot – it was time to have a go on the tutorials.

Day 3
I am now fully equipped to enter SL after spending about 6 hours completing the basic tutorials. I was moved to a welcome area where I met two tutor guides. I was quite surprised to find that these two guides were quite old in RL. They told me the reason they liked coming on SL was , because they got to meet people from all over the world. I questioned the definition of “meeting” and one told me that being able to chat was good enough for her and that she enjoyed sharing stories with new people. I didn't quite believe this, in fact I'm still so sceptical of the whole thing I'm not sure I will believe anything anyone tells me. This is due to effort all these characters h ave made on there SL person. I believe that these people are perhaps bored and use SL to “play” but also chat at the same time. Most of the conversations I had in this area were people asking how to do certain functions, not the most interesting conversations but I suppose it was the welcome zone.
My immediate thoughts of SL are that is very difficult to get in and start “living”. Yes I have spoke to a few people about it but they all seem to just define it as a way of communicating, surely there must be more to it than just a chat, otherwise why would they not just go to chat sites?

The one thing that I have gathered is that in this area where it is populated by new arrivals, most seemed to be older than 40/45 years old in RL. I'm not surprised by this as I don't think this SL will appeal to younger generations who's social lives are a lot more active.
I decided not to change much of my appearance, partly because I'm interested to see how welcomed I will be in the main island as an obvious newcomer and partly because I didn't want to spend any money. I left for the main island.

ARTEFACT NUMBER 2: QUESTION AND ANSWERS
In a previous post I put up an example of the questions asked to subjects aged 20-25.
This is an evaluation of these findings:


Ed Walsh N0088641
Evaluation of Second Artefact
Questionnaires sent to age group 20-25
The question answers showed a vary of responses. However most of them did express the need for “real world” contact and that it is more important than socialising online. Although this is the case it seemed apparent that a lack of community activity for this age group was a factor. Some believed it was due to a lack of time, others just that didn't have an interest in engaging the community.
It was an underlining issue that the internet did not give sufficient engagment to class real friendships or community. I think this could be due to the age of the subjects. It is a very sociable age and most have only just started making their second phases of friends so a lot of social activities do occur for this age group. Also it may be due to the familiarity of the internet, other age groups (older) may find the internet as more of a novelty and find it a lot more interesting, whereas the age group in question have grown up with using it making it less exciting.
Here are some individual evaluations of the questionnaire:
PRP 2.1
Emma was perhaps an unexpected result. Not only was she very active online with forums and social networks, but she also does a lot of work within the community. I did not expect the level of community interaction from someone this age. I believe this is mainly due to the fact that she is involved in a religious group. It is apparent from the results that religion still holds strong community ties and all ages are encouraged to participate. It could be a reason that others of the same age do not engage more – there are fewer central meeting groups in the community in recent years, religion being one strong remainder.
PRP 2.2
Hayley was another subject that did some community work. She explained she did do work at a youth club and I feel this is for experience and perhaps a sense of duty. However when it came to here own personal social time she found it increasingly hard to meet with friends and communicate with peope (due to he work commitments and friends moving away). She felt that this where the Internet had helped. Also stating she did not feel internet communication was a valued as real world it was something that enabled here to carry on communicating where without it she may not.
So perhaps the Internet filled a gap but was not ideal.
PRP 2.3 – 2.6
These results were the more predictable of my findings. All expressed a lack of engagement in the community. Some expressed this was due to time commitments and some were just a fact of none interest. All did however use the internet to socialise and communicate. An underling factor of all results was the use of information on the web but these subjects also used the internet to engage in community. I thought that this would be the majority and it was. I believe it may be down to the lack of “sense of community” in todays society. I felt that many just wanted to socialise themsleves with friends and once their work commitments are over they do not feel a need to enhance a community in their area. I can understand this point and also the use of internet for these users. I feel that the internet did not actually stop the participants in engaging the community more just to enhance their communication with existing social groups. This point may not be the same for other age groups. Further research will uncover incidents where the internet does stop people engaging the community.

Questionnaire.
This is a copy of the questions that have been sent out to MANY people!
Still awaiting more results but they will be posted tommorow followed by an evaluation:


NAME..........................
AGE.............................
OCCUPATION..............
How many hours a day (average) do you spend on the Internet?

How Important is the Internet to you?

What do you use the Internet for?

Has the internet improved your life? How?

What social network or online commmunity/support groups do you belong to? Include help forums and networking sites.

Do the above contribute heavily to your social life? To what extent?

Do you get a sense of community or belonging from your online groups?

What social or community groups do you belong to in the real world? Include sports groups or societys ,church etc.

What activities do you do within your community?

How much time/effort do you put into these real world groups? And how does this compare to the online ones (more or less)?

How does the interaction in real world groups compare to online ones?
Better or worse?

Do the two intertwine in your lifestyle?

Are both essential?

Which do you value more and why?

*please answer questions as extensivly as you can the more detail the better

SECOND LIFE!

Yes its true I have bcome a member of 2nd Life. I must stress this is not out of choice - its all in cause for my artefacts. I plan to interview people on 2nd life to get responses to their opinions of Internet communities. I had planned on jumping in and interviewing - followed by a sharp exit. However it appears that the makers of 2nd life have craftly designed it so you cannot get in there without spending an obscene amount of time learning the basics! ahhh! I just hope I dont get suckered in and become addicted myself!

Here is a screen shot of me inside the mad world with my online name "Teddy Gorbunov" (strange name I know but you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find an original name!)