A Second Life For The Public Sector?

We have been examining the educational, political and public sector uses for the kind of virtual environments exemplified by Linden Lab's Second Life.

Second Life offers users the chance to reinvent themselves within a three-dimensional virtual environment where they can buy and sell 'land,' change their appearance and create and build structures and areas for interaction. While Second Life may be virtual, it boasts 12 million real users and a real economy worth millions of pounds.

In the public sector, this has led to some imaginative uses such as a project allowing people to explore parts of a regeneration project in a city in three dimensions, allowing them to see what it could look like after reconstruction work, and talk live at the same time to an official who is 'showing them around'. Other uses include a schools project that has created a fun virtual environment for kids; and virtual town hall meetings.

But the experiments are not without their drawbacks: our articles also explore the current problems with attempting to use cutting edge virtual environments such as graphics display glitches and computer memory overload.

For more information on how public sector bodies are using Second Life, follow the links below:
Part 1: University of Second Life
Part 2: Welcome to 'Mixed Reality'
Part 3: Cabinet Office To Build Innovation Centre In Second Life

And if you have any information about further work in this field, please let us know: email Majeed Saleh on majeed@headstar.com