Robin Linden is back from vacation, she’s injured her ankle and she’s talking about intergrating your SL with your RL. More specifically she’s talking about people using their RL names in SL (Stop cheering Nobody). She also told me to go to bed but I’ll worry about that another time!
There are of course several issues with this but let me start by saying this was merely a discussion and not policy so don’t go running for the hills. This isn’t going to happen tomorrow.
However I think it’s worth discussing. Now with the changing of names I believe there’s a worry that it will break things you’ve created. However I also believe that Cory Linden’s name is no longer Cory Linden, well I know it isn’t because I’ve searched for it, but Cory Ondrejka exists and someone told me the other day that that is the name on his creations now. Can anyone confirm this?
As for RL links, more web intergration and utilising features like facebook for social networking I’m all for it. Largely because it means I don’t have to keep moaning about not having enough groups, which some of you tell me off for moaning about!
There seems to be a belief that educators and corporations would rather use real names. I’m sure many business owners would like to use real names too. Personally I’d like to be able to use my real name or my avatar name depending upon the circumstance, which brings us to the issue of whether a World of Warcraft type login where you have one account and several avatars would work for a scenario whereby I’d want to be Ciaran Laval sometimes or my real self. I mean one day I could be the mild mannered Land owner and the next day I could be righting wrongs and fighting the forces of evil … hold on that’s what my Warlock does in World of Warcraft, not my real self.
However you get the point I hope. Do we go for a one to many type account or a many to one type scenario like we have now where one day I might decide that it would be advantageous to be the real me.
Does the idea of your real name being your avatar name scare or delight you? Do you think this idea has any legs? Certainly in terms of education, I know there are classes that I can take where it would be easier for me to use my real name. Second Life is of course supposed to be, well a second life. Yet there are times when I’d like to be me in a virtual world.
Thoughts anybody? Ideas? Suggestions? I’ll take Robin’s advice and head to bed now!