Life in the Virtual Dollhouse
OK, so maybe the title of this blog entry isn't quite right. "Life in the Virtual Playpen" also comes to mind. But I like the dollhouse analogy better.
Perhaps, some of you say, I'm in a particularly flip and sarcastic mood. But maybe I'm not. And, just maybe I have a point. Let's hear it for thinking out of the box, playpen, dollhouse, or whatever you want to call it. But it's often when you think outside of the box that you come up with some really interesting and good ideas.
You guessed it. I'm talking about one of my favorite work-related topics: Second Life and virtual worlds.
About a month ago, I came up with this analogy:
Playing in a dollhouse is to a child
as
playing in Second Life is to an adult.
For those of you who think that I might have totally lost my mind, as well as my faithful readers that are still with me, let's keep going.
First of all, I have a lot of respect for dollhouses. As a child, I played with dollhouses for years. We still have two dollhouses at my house. Some toys are just too good to give away, and dollhouses are one of them. I've even considered making myself a "grown up dollhouse," you know, one of those dollhouses with electricity and real bone china. In terms of actual dolls, I am the proud owner of two discreet doll collections: one of international dolls dressed in traditional costumes and another of vintage Barbie dolls. As I write this, I am even more confused about my complete lack of interest in my avatar's appearance and outfits, given my fascination with dolls and doll clothes.
When I taught kindergarten and preschool all of my classrooms had dollhouses. Growing up, my two daughters played with dollhouses. In my developmental psychology classes, I extensively studied the topic of play. So, while some readers of my blog might view dollhouse play as fluff, rest assured that I don't.
When a child plays in a dollhouse, he/she creates an imaginary character using a doll. The child moves the doll around the dollhouse, acting out the role of the character that he/she has created. In psychology and education circles, this is called role playing. Role playing is one of the oldest educational methods, and has been successfully employed in educational and psychological settings for years.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist, which, fortunately, I'm not, to see the similarities between a doll and an avatar. It easily follows to see the connection between the dollhouse and a virtual world such as Second Life.
While I like the analogy and think it is a good one, there's probably a reason that I made the analogy over a month ago and have yet to blog about it. The analogy brings up more questions than answers, and quite frankly, I don't have any of the answers, just more questions.
- What is the significance of the role playing that people are doing in Second Life?
- Has something in our culture changed that is attracting people to playing in a virtual worlds, or is the opportunity afforded by virtual worlds the driving force behind people's wanting to play in them?
- It's been said that Americans work too hard and don't play enough. Is Second Life a way to interject more "play" into our lives?
The above are really loaded questions. Some days I wish I were back in graduate school where I could discuss the answers to such questions with a bunch of academic types on a regular basis. But those days are long gone ... at least in my real life, and I can assure you that I am not going back to school in my second one. As I struggle to come up with my own answers, I often find myself straddling a great divide, which really, if I think about it, shakes down to nothing more than the real vs. virtual sides of the fence. As fascinating as virtual worlds are, I'm finding that I'm a real world kind of gal.
I still can't get past being able to touch the outfits and comb the hair of my real life dolls, and to play amongst the furnishings in a real life dollhouse. Avatars and pixelated scenes just don't do it for me.
At the end of the day, maybe it comes down to nothing more than that?
