Verilio project in second life

Our group made three different kinds of buildings in
Second life and put these three buildings together

(My group members put theirs on the top of mine ).
It was not my first experience in second life,

so compared with my group members, I completed a

little bit faster. My building has larger size than theirs,

and its texture is brick. Walter's building is a round

room with glass material, while steve's is a castle with

the rock texture. Three buildings are totally different

in color, material, and style, but they are connected

closely with each other. I hope I had the pictures of

our buildings, but since they were located in a wrong

place, the owner of that place drove us away when

he/she found us there. It was a little bit ambarrasing

but a pretty fun experience, but because of that, I feel

sorry that I did not have a chance to take pictures

of our buildings.

Anyway, the experiece of building things in second

life is really a worthy trial for the understanding of

Virilio's ideas. For one thing, the modern digital

technology blurred the line between the reality and the

virtuality. Virtual world is no longer the simulation of

the real world, but the replace of it. Some people

claimed that virtual world grants insiders freedom to

do anything they can hardly do or not allowed to do.

It makes sense in certain perspective. Take second life

for instance, people can play differnt roles that they

been eager to become, or they can posscess many

skills they do not have in reall world, like fly, swim or

jump from high position, or change their appearance

like face, complexion, height, gender, etc., or, say, a

disabled person can become a healthy one like anyothers.

However, Virilio contended that this freedom would
be more and more limited since the simulated world is

gradually replacing the real world and this means that

roles in real world should also be applied in virtual world.

We were drove out of that owener's territory is a good

case in point. They have rules here, so that this world,

though a virtul one, can still keep orders in this world.

we have some freedom, but they are all under the premise

of following the rules of the world.

For another, in virtual world, the distance between objects

and subjects, as Virilio stated, has been greatly shortened.

In real world, to construct a building, for example,

our chance is almost zero, unless we are the designer or builder

of this building. For common people, we could do nothing to

change the size, the appreance, or the height of the building.

In a virtual world like second life, however, we can. Any users

of second life, no matter you are a professional architect, or

a perosn who knows nothing about architecture, you can build

a big house or an apartment, a garage, a mall, whatever you like

and also, you could make it as strange as you can without the

limit of physical construction rules. Additionally, you are not

restricted by time. You may build up a skyscraper in just a few

hours rather than years, or you can spend a year to just build

a simple pool. The time requirement in real construction is never

a problem in virtual world. From this point, the concepts of

time and space are changed radically.