Voice in Virtual Worlds

On the heels of SecondTalk (covered here), Linden Lab announced 'Bringing Voice To SecondLife' on the official SecondLife blog a few days ago.

What does it mean?

Business Angle

Well, for starters I certainly wouldn't want to be in the shoes of SecondTalk. They apparently sunk money into development of integrating SecondLife and Skype. It seems sort of unfair to SecondTalk folks, but it is what it is - according to the SecondLife blog, voice has always been part of the long term plan. I find this somewhat disconcerting since not all of Linden Lab's long term plans with SecondLife are transparent, and sinking money into creating something which is in their long term plans carries apparent risk.

But then, maybe Linden Lab had a discussion with SecondTalk. I don't know. It would be cool if they did. It would suck if they didn't. Better shelve the scratch and sniff interface.

Communication

People like opening their mouths and uttering sounds that one can hopefully find in a dictionary. I'm not against that in any way, I find two way audio communication useful sometimes. I've been known to use a telephone on occasion, as an example, but I like to be brief and to the point because I find having a disembodied voice chatting directly into my ear a bit unnatural and uncomfortable. I like the world around me at any given point in time, and prefer it to disembodied voices. Part of the joy of being an INTJ, I suppose.

But let's face it. I'm weird. Lots of people rack up large phone bills talking to each other, and spending time saying 'Hi, how are you' at each other. This is, generally speaking, good. People should be able to communicate as they see fit, once the people being communicated with wish to participate.

So it works for real time communication. Oral tradition precedes writing - anyone who has walked within 5 feet of a history text should be able to see that. Writing permitted people to pass things on from one generation to the other - somewhere, someone is remembering a class where a teacher was talking about papyrus. Oral - didn't. An argument could be made that podcasts and other audio recordings can do the same now - but that isn't completely accurate. Some people simply deal better with visual than they do with audio, or require visual with the audio. People have different learning styles. Where I had a friend who would listen to bits of audio books in his car over lunch, I was outside under a tree reading a book at a somewhat faster pace.

Audio is good, don't get me wrong - and used properly it makes sense. But what happens when someone who speaks a different language bumps into you? Audio translation doesn't exist in a meaningful way on the internet yet. Textual translation, as awful as it is sometimes, does exist. In a way, audio may reinforce linguistic walls within virtual worlds, and I'm not certain that this is a thing that should be celebrated as much as worked towards mitigating.

There are reasons that many things are in writing in cultures around the world. There is an illusion of permanence, so we won't talk about that. What we can say is that someone who is literate can typically handle written information faster than audio information. Am I wrong? When's the last time you saw a street sign that yelled at you?

Audio isn't a replacement for audio, just as podcasts aren't a replacement for blog entries. Mixed right, it can be a very rich experience. Mixed wrong, well... Babel.

The Handicapped

Let's not forget the audio impaired - people with poor or no hearing aren't going to appreciate this. Blind people would, but - is there a blind person in SecondLife? That would be interesting to discuss. They would certainly appreciate audio in their SecondLife, yet - how can they appreciate the other things in SecondLife? Not so simple.

Parting Thoughts

Altogether, this is pretty cool. But don't expect me to chat away with people via this service too much. I like written communication because it allows me to multitask better - I can slide back to a reference if necessary.

Still, it will be amusing to hear the excuses people use for not talking - particularly female avatars who are really men, or vice versa. This could be a riot.

But while I'm giggling at the world, I'll continue making non-audio artefacts.