Nobody's Library: Remixing Media In Second Life, And Reinventing Sustainable ICT
Submitted by Taran on Sun, 08/20/2006 - 16:26
One of the things I have been brainstorming in SecondLife has been how to actually use the virtual world for something more. I've got a lot of ideas, but the one I decided to start with was a virtual [t:library] of sorts - not your mother's library, or one designed by bureaucrats, but a simple random display of interesting people, and in the future, things.
And these things, once clicked, will take you to the relevant Wikipedia entry. It's a remix of the
You can stop by Nobody's Library in SecondLife and see for yourself.
The Non-standard Deviation
There is a library in SecondLife which got free hosting on Info Isle (along with TechSoup. I saw what they were doing, and lost interest not because they aren't doing good work - I'm certain that they are - but I've always had a problem with the way libraries are structured. If you want to see how to set up books, don't go to a library where all the shelves march in order. Sure, you can find stuff in the catalog, indexed every which way. And for academic work, this is a good thing.
But most people aren't academics1. And most people who use ICT don't even know what the acronym stands for. The person in the remote village of a developing nation doesn't know much about the digital divide. And these very structures that seem to be used in instances to breech the digital divide seem at times to reinforce it instead. NGOs have invented a new language, not different from corporate America (in fact, with a few exceptions, it's the same thing). Sadly, a lot of NGO culture revolves around acquiring funding. Few projects are planned to become self sustaining once venture capital runs out. Like concrete in a developing country, the bones of these projects litter the landscape in an open graveyard. Fortunately, at least some of them use open content and open source so that transplants can be done, which could accelerate things... but why not try to work from a self-sustaining base and move forward? It's non-intuitive. And yet there's less fiscal risk.
It just means more work for less pay and increased risk. But it does save on the overhead of administration (bureaucracy) and allows faster evolution. If a project is failing, it gets dumped fast.
In this particular instance, it seems the experiment is bearing fruit. The income from the project has already been used in uploading new images; about 160L so far in donations (figure about 50 cents US). No images have been bought so far. Maybe, in time - but the idea is not to sell objects. It's to share information in a way that works in a virtual world. Books in notecards suck. Use the web for what it's good for. :-)
Stuff To Do
Since I started the library, a few people have shown up through events and so on - and have seemed to like it. One journalist, Asia Connell was a bit disappointed when the servers for Wikipedia had the hiccoughs when she visited. Another lady, from Mexico, pointed out something I should have already thought of due to my work related to CARDICIS - multilingual support. And with the Wikipedia, it's possible - so I will have to update the scripts in the objects such that the user has a choice of language.
More images over time, from all over the world (I am trying to avoid a US bias), and the images are fair game under open content or public domain rules. Plus I get to revisit some cool articles.
There's no secret to what I'm doing. It's right there out in the open. Anyone else could do it. At some point, the project will have to make money to support the number of objects in it (land in SecondLife only supports a certain number of objects per square meter, which comes at a cost). If it fails, it dies. If it succeeds, it becomes self-sustaining. End of story.
1And it seems that is lost on many academics.
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