I spend a lot of time googling around for information on how to do stuff in Second Life, building and scripting. In doing so I run into critiques and prognostications about this virtual world. I currently have multiple tracks going on in my mind about what I have been reading, the viability of the SL scripting language and general programmability; and indications that SL will try to emerge from it's virtual existence into the "real world" of the internet. There are already hooks into Facebook and PayPal. At this point there are a number of problems. Some to do with monetary transactions, SL has Linden dollars, that can be converted from and into US dollars. Linden dollars can be purchased through PayPal. Another difficulty is with user identities. The real world identity behind SL avatars can be hidden but Facebook requires users to be identifiable. This presents a real problem for quite a few avatars. The people behind some of what I call "monsters from the id" do not want their SL activities known to people they know in the real world.

I'm still too new to Second Life to write anything definitive about the place but conversations with many of the avatars I meet is providing me with a great deal of information and points of view. One thing that is very helpful in this regard is that all my conversations are logged. I can reread them all from files stored in my computer's cache. I'm wondering if I need permission to quote an avatar.

Again, I'm too new to Second Life to make valid judgments but it seems that there are a number of problems with the quality of the scripting language used to control the building blocks, prims and objects, of Second Life. It's my impression that SL is working as a "proof of concept" application. If virtual worlds can provide the environments for user interactions required for businesses and for academia as well as general social networking we should soon see more sophisticated virtual worlds being made available. I understand there are a number of private worlds already in operation but I haven't been invited into any. There are also the game worlds that actually started all this, but I've never been a game player.