Late night, Worrying about SL misrepresentation and enjoying the stars

Well last night was another late one. Having been out of electronic communication standing in on a completely unrelated bid meeting I had to compress my quick 5 minute daily patches blogging, SL and metaverse thinking etc into a much longer block at night.
Not least becuase of feeling the need to help some collegues understand some of the extra benefits that metaverse approaches such as Second Life brings.
Anyway, I realized something beneficial in the area of ‘protecting the innocent’ . A social object appears to be that people can and do hide behind their avatars. Consequently they may mis represent and not be nice people. I apprecaite the problem people have, but something occured to me on an internal discussion.
This is by no means water tight but its something to bear in mind. Second Life et al are generally public spaces. People tend to start to meet in public areas. Even if you are not in a meeting you can see others in one, and that is a benefit. In normal chat rooms people pose as other people to try and attract people away. Very often the rest of the chat room is not that bothered. In SL if we see someone approaching someone in an unsual way, or are aware of a certain reputation we are able to intervene. Now the counterpoint is that its much easier to pretend to be someone else, but there is an element, just as with the co-location of land generating traffic to your site based on where it is not what its called, that must play into the ability to protect the innocent.
Obvioulsy if someone is very devious and nasty they will get aronud any of this, but getting to know people by their actions as well as their words may highlight the nasties more? Either way its social responsibilty and education that lets us ‘protect the innocent’
As it was late I decided to repay a visit to the space centre, and very good it is looking too.
I had somehow missed the planetarium last visit. Also Davee Commerce’s NPL stand looks to be showing a lot more now too. My visit cheered me up and restored my faith in our digital personas.




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About epredator

Director of metaverse and emerging tech consultancy http://www.feedingedge.co.uk Former IBM Consulting IT Specialist with 18 years at the company Games player epredator xbox live tag. epredator potato in second life