Smithy

A little over 15 years ago there was no such thing as an internet(1), today it is a multi billion dollar industry. 3D internet is the logical next evolutionary phase of this medium. Linden Lab's Second Life, which provides such a platform, is aiming to establish a global grid, based on interoperability by Open Sourcing it's Server Code. A set of public protocols for computers to talk to each other, just like the World Wide Web. This means that in the forseeable future every organization, company, what have you not can chunk an island in the basement. ISP's will offer these servers, (parts or numbers of) islands in the virtual world, for those not capable (or interested) in doing this for themselves, initiatives like OSgrid & Openlifegrid are testament to that. If you lean back and think about that a little while you will soon realise the potential. For businesses. For all types of organization who've got something to share with an audience.
For education.
15 years ago hardly anybody could teach you how to build an html page (which at that time could not even embed images), you had to figure it all out yourself, rummaging around in a basic text editor. Flash didn't exist. PHP didn't exist. CSS didn't exist. Javascript didnt exist. (My)SQL was arcane magic. Apache Webserver was still A Patchy Webserver. A LAMP was a lightbulb, and not a Linux-Apache-MySql-PHP acronym yet. If you now look at the jobmarket, people having these skills are sought after, very much so, making a good living, competing, active .. leaving the country for better payment overseas.
So, just as a reminder, we shouldn't just think about using this venue for teaching and learning, we should also think about how to teach using, creating, populating this venue, how to share this as of yet pretty rare knowledge, for students and staff alike.
Second Life provides not just a tool but shed full of tools, with which you can build other tools, just like a smithy. We shouldn't just call into the smithy & ask for a sword. We should walk into the smithy and make us a sword, getting dirty, sweaty & very tired in the process. Work with fire. Teach apprentices, students how to hammer it into a plow after.
Challenging? Sure. But if you don't live on the edge you are using to much space.


(1) Well, there was, but it had little to do with what we have publically available today. Let's not get into details and just stick to August 6, 1991.