Second Life Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Second Life - Essay Example No doubt, it has a significant meaning for businesses and economy today. Second Life is more user centred, where the user is no more a person operating and navigating from outside but can get in and be themselves yet control the environment in SL. It is built on Web 2.0 which a decade old technology that still getting the attention of developers. It brought about major changes in the website development and World Wide Web. For example, wikis and blogs would not have been possible without this technology. They allow their users to create their own content, and to customize the page (O’Reilly, 2005). In Second Life, teens can create and customize a digital self called an "avatar," fly through an ever-changing 3D landscape, chat and socialize with other teens from all over the world, and build anything from skyscrapers to virtual vehicles. It’s a boundless world of surprise and adventure that encourages teens to work together and use their imaginations (Teen Second Life, n.d.) Also, SL depends on â€Å"user –created content†; the software is â€Å"open source† (Watte & Macedonia, 2009). Second life has similar attributes like any other synthetic learning environment with a few improvements like enabling the users to create their own content, edit and control the environment. Web 2.0 technologies are about participation, convergence, interaction, usability and data driven (Kemp, 2009). These are just a speck of the whole lot of features of Web 2.0 that SL exploits to create a virtual world. This new technology addresses the growing requirement for more open and interactive online virtual worlds. SL is a successor of one of the popular virtual worlds of the 90’s- Active Worlds. With the help of Web 2.0 technologies, SL offers user controlled options and allows the user to get immersed in the virtual world. This is the