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There is who speaks about boom, flop and relative review of the phenomenon “virtual worlds”, we have seen TIME deprecating Second Life as one of 5 worse sites, better to avoid, triggering therefore an immediate media storm, announcing the retirement of the companies that invested in, often empty, virtual islands. They talk ’bout about Cisco, Starwood Hotels, Circuit City in IBM and many other other.

Some other then taked part in aid of the ill-famed virtual world declaring that, in their opinions, the failure of the campaigns promoted from the companies would have been riconducibile simply to the insufficient study of Second Life as instrument, going to consider it like a mere channel of marketing in which inserting their own structure with some advertising billboard throwing away capitals from 10,000 to 30,000 euros per island. Well, “Company-Display window – billboards” is the most fashionable term in use, defining the recent marketing trend adopted by corporation in the 3d platform in issue. But TIME and all much or less informed journalistic heads that joined the chorus, went to terribly criticize also the technological platform of SL, defining it unstable and declaring minimum system requirement too high ; in other words if u havent got good PC with an optimal 3dhardware and a generous bandwith, it turns hard to navigate for the several island managed by LindenLab, the society owner of Second Life. Other point in issue denounced from the media: Second Life is full of sexual maniac and crazy people of every kind.

I will start from the last points enunciates in order to expose my thought, maintaining the good trend of some supporter of the virtual worlds, confronting the phenomenon Second Life with the one of the web of far years ’90s.

First point, “Second Life is full of sexual maniacs and crazy people of every kind”; Absolutely true, but we consider that SL is a virtual world, therefore like such every day respects the same rules of the real life: in real life u find good people , professionals, students, mothers, fathers, crazy and sexual maniacs, obvious that to be masked behind a wall of anonymity the man becomes tendentially perbvers. But therefore like in the real world, it is possible to find normal people that use the platform of Second Life for study, job or simpli fun. However tell me if you really thought that from 90s to nowadays a good part of Internet has been used always for legal and morals files traffics. Nevertheless today as yesterday every one can manage home banking, have shopping, sold our used books and check the weather forecast .

Therefore on Second Life it is possible to see a preview of the apartment that we will acquire before that it’s been constructed (info), to visit one of the many reproductions of city and really existing monuments (see Pinacoteca di Dresda, or one of the many Italian cities), you may follow the orientation meetings for new students of the University of Turin, to have a preview of the London sanitary system projects(img) and many other things. This things today, lets imagine what tomorrow may brings. I’ve been clear?

Second, “terribly unstable point and from too much demanding requirement of system”. Second Life is still in way of development, goodness knows if in the near future it will be still called in that way, just think if Linden Lab goes public and after a result of vary changes could also be given a name that inspires little less “escapes” from the first life. However the future is probabily the releasing of the servers code, that will allow anyone of being able to use the own machine as a virtual island of the metaverse.
Point third, “the companies display window (billboards)”. What’s the problem with the islands of the corporation that invest in Second Life? maybe the race against time about appearing in the metaverse, in the period of maximum boom all journalistic heads was speaking about this new virtual world populated by avatars. The marketing offices probably saw just real eyes to feed with advertising billboards of every type, they opened island with rich inaugurations that then, in the following days, would be left unavoidablly desolated. I must recognize some innovating cases, like Gabetti that offers a reproduction of real buildings from their catalogues, BNL(National Labour Bank) with their in-world recruiting, but also Mercedes-Benz with a small structure but functional and elegant, risen near a circuit race on which trying faithfully reproduced the new C-Class . Chief Executive Manager of Gabetti spoke about the substantial difference between static web and a SL, in the first one is not known the number of persons visiting the same page in the same time, although virtual environments in which the interaction between the visitors it is the key word.

I point out then the appreciable initiative of Antonio Di Pietro, than (political guideline that can find supports or less) as a result of the takeover of its party of Italia Dei Valori in Second Life, has launch a series of directly debates and conferences in-world, allowing a direct and not filtered contact.

The plans of the University of Turin and University of Cagliari are not banal, they are in fact clear testimonies of the importance of the educational in SL; interesting intentions are also held by University of Milan with SecondLaw, “a plan of search of the Chair of Advanced Legal Computer science of the University of the Studies of Milan, aimed to create an Italian legal presence in Second Life”, however we consider that the university of all the world plans and experiments already in the metaverse from more than a year (found partial, just a directory here for gives an idea to you).

Many interesting initiatives, also from Italian part, the art and the educational won’t be never experimentally outside context in the metaverse where all can be realized and where all it’s still to discover, its however obvious that the development of the virtual environment is assimilable to the historical course of the web of approximately 15 years ago, when to have an email or Internet site was considered just loss of time. We consider that an instrument like Second Life, if, well-used, represents the maximum expression of creativity and collaboration on the web. pardon it represents web 2.0, or better the 3.0 one.

Semantic apart, today perhaps to have a avatar it is just a loss of time, tomorrow could be the future of what we call the Internet.