So as I mentioned yesterday, as part of the changing editorial focus here at ITG I've decided to start doing more tours of large areas of the grid, and filing multimedia reports about what I found. This is one of the things I can still easily do in the grid these days, after all, is explore large areas on my own during times of low lag, versus the popular live events I mentioned yesterday that I'm having a harder and harder time even getting connected to anymore. For today's trip, then, I decided to make a boat ride down the entire length of the main "winter river" in SL; that is, the river that runs through the section of the grid that's perpetually covered in snow and ice.

I admit that I'm kinda fascinated with the winter section of SL, mostly because I don't know anything about it; how it came about, when it came about, why Linden Lab decided to create this but not any other specialized types of terraforming on the mainland. Plus, I've noticed a strange kind of unified quiet in the winter section of the grid as well, that you don't normally see from other sections of the mainland; whether on purpose or on accident, the area just seems to have a lot more tasteful residences and a lot less glaring big-box stores than one randomly finds elsewhere. And of course I just find the winter section of SL to be aesthetically pleasing to begin with; and how can you turn down the prospect of full-speed boating in winter without ever getting chilly or catching cold?

And thus it is that I recently spent three hours successfully making the trip, stopping numerous times to check out an untold amount of random crap, snapping copious amounts of photos along the way. And as you can see in these images, there's something about the now greatly expanded grid that's still amazingly true, despite the doomsayers predicting that the mainstream would be the creative death of SL; that when you provide people with the means to create almost anything they can imagine, people will use those tools to create an astonishingly diverse amount of stuff. I mean, sure, you're also seeing a lot more copies of popular prefabs on the mainland these days too, although even that's a bit misleading; most owners of prefabs, after all, end up doing at least some amount of customization, and of course with landscaping also being a free public tool, no two estates ever end up looking exactly the same.

Spending all that time in a row the other night looking at homes got me to thinking again as well, concerning one of the many definitions people use to try to describe this unique environment; how in many ways, SL is not much more than a highly powerful social network with a 3D interface, kinda like MySpace on steroids. When you break it all down, after all, SL at its core does a remarkably similar thing as MySpace and all the other web-based social networks out there: all of them provide a system of tools to the general public, that allow people to easily express their personality online, at which point other people can find and interact with them based on shared interests. That's pretty much it when it comes to social networks, whether you're talking about a 800-pound gorilla like MySpace or a highly specialized one like LibraryThing (a social network specifically for nerdy book lovers).

In fact, when you look at SL from the standpoint of traditional online features, the grid actually combines two different popular online models into one intriguingly unique environment:

--Like MySpace and other social networks, SL gives landowners a series of tools in which to express their personality: the ability to share photos, audio and video, the ability to change the look and behavior of their "profile" (a web page with MySpace, actual land in SL), etc. Like MySpace, SL landowners get their own "address," which people can use to directly visit their space; or, a visitor can discover one's space tangentially, perhaps through a neighbor/friend or maybe by searching on a particular topic at a centralized database.

--At the same time though, SL also functions as a large-scale chat community, much like logging into ICQ or AIM on a busy Saturday night. Much like AIM, SL provides a plethora of smaller group spaces (land in the grid, "rooms" in a chat environment), where smaller clusters of people can get together away from the larger crowd and speak on their own. Like AIM, a variety of controls can be placed on these group spaces; they can be public or private, advertised or unlisted, dedicated to a specific subject, etc. And much like AIM, the system can also be used for private one-on-one communication, as well as "mail" designed to be read at a later date.

So yeah, already a pretty intriguing environment when you look at it that way; kinda like if you slipped Spanish Fly one night to both Friendster and Yahoo Chat, I suppose, locked them in a cheap motel room, then nine months later took custody of their bastard child. (NOTE: I hereby officially apologize for that horrifically strained metaphor.) Ah, but then you add the killer aspect of SL, the one thing missing from all these other online services, which is the persistent 3D environment where all interaction happens -- a place that's slightly different every time you visit, a place that changes when you're not even there, a place with a permanent geography and shared public roads and even its own persistent laws of physics (albeit sometimes fantastical laws like flying and teleportation; my point is that such laws are consistent across the entire grid). It's this virtual-reality aspect of SL that's made it as infamous as it is, and also contributes heavily to the main irony about the grid -- that it is almost impossible to adequately describe, but something one immediately understands by actually experiencing.

And really, when you think about it, the persistent universe of the grid is not just some gimmick when it comes to online tools, but actually enhances all the traditional services that SL provides in different ways:

--When it comes to group discussion, for example, the persistent universe of SL provides something most chat environments can only dream of, which is a way of adding non-verbal communication to enhance understanding. Note, for example, how easy it is to add body language to one's speech in the grid; how one can wink or nod while chatting, fold one's arms across one's chest, shift one's weight to one leg, all of which contribute to overall communication between humans in a way AIM will never be able to duplicate. Note how if one wants to get into a smaller discussion in a SL "chat room," all one does is physically move to an empty corner of that room; such physical distances are impossible to convey in the usual text-window interface of most traditional chat software. And note as well that "chat rooms" in SL go way beyond having a funny name at the top of that text window; they involve the creation of a literal physical room, one that can be specifically tweaked to enhance whatever discussion is taking place. When used the right way, the 3D interface of SL can be a profoundly unique tool for online communication, an option that one literally cannot get from a single other piece of software on the planet.

--And then of course is the social-network enhancements such a 3D environment provides; and jeez, where do we even start with that one? Imagine your MySpace profile not as a web page but as a three-dimensional house -- one that you build yourself from the ground up, with absolutely no regulations at all over how it looks or what you do with it. Imagine a place like a community-held private island, where instead of using a search engine to find like-minded individuals you simply walk around and check out your neighbors. (Even better, imagine if Linden hadn't taken their now famous unregulated approach to mainland zoning; imagine if they had instead cordoned off zoned "neighborhoods" for specific interests, for example an entire continent just for musicians.) Imagine an online account where every single pixel of your profile says something about you; not just the text you enter into provided fields, but even the white space between words and paragraphs, with visitors able to actually crawl around on that page and zoom in on any particular pixel they want. In this light, the 3D environment of SL becomes not only a gimmicky selling point but also the ultimate tool of user empowerment; a place where customers are literally given a blank page, as large or as small as they want and can afford, that instead of reading one literally walks on and physically explores.

Although I have no hard facts to support this, when all is said and done I do believe that this is what the majority of landowners in SL are using their land for; not to construct giant clubs and stores, the activity which garners the lion's share of SL press, but instead to construct intricate personal expressions of their personality, and to have fun with their friends because of it just like any other social network. When looked at this way, the ever-growing popularity of SL land ownership makes a lot more sense, and I think provides a refreshingly honest alternative to the "everyone in SL is trying to turn a profit" tone of most articles about virtual land. If every landowner in SL was there to open a business, SL wouldn't work and no one would want to visit; it's the fact that most landowners aren't trying to open a business that makes the environment so diverse and fascinating, and the stores that do exist stand out even more.

Anyway, I guess that's enough philosophizing for now; hope you enjoyed this tour, and like I said, expect to see more of them in the coming months. By the way, know of a particular section of the grid that you think is worth exploring? By all means, do make sure to mention it in the comments; and don't forget the SLurl!