29 January 2007

Second Life and Africa

Here's an interesting point:

Many have observed that the African American economy in the US is probably bigger than even South Africa, a country recognised as the engine of Africa, with 47 million people and yet there is no visible connection between this economy and the rest of Africa for the world to notice.

Imagine everyone of us who are privileged to be connected could use our contacts and share them with our virtual friends in this Second Life and all of us can know each other through other people, how long will it take for us to create a social networking virtual space that we can collectively use to negotiate a better life for us and those connected to us.

One of the paradoxes of Second Life is that for all that it allows people to assume any identity they want, most of these turn out to be Caucasian (with a smattering of furries). As Second Life - or its successor - moves closer to the centre of online activity, the issue of bringing in developing nations and their related identities is one that will become ever more pressing if we are to avoid exacerbating the digital divide.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post! Thanks, I was very inspired by it. I wrote the Second Life and Africa post on Ugotrade (and thanks for the link back!). I am very interested in more of your thoughts on Second Life and any input you have on my project.

Glyn Moody said...

Thanks for the comment. It's great to see an idea passed around like this - it's what all this blogging stuff is about. I'm sure there will be plenty more on Second Life on this blog - and on related areas (like the Qwaq stuff I wrote about yesterday). Good luck with your projects.

Anonymous said...

That is interesting... I was wondering that myself lately. You see a lot of Caucasians and furry's. A good SL friend of mine was actually fed up with his cool and clean and sexy look; he is now walking around in SL having a purple skin and wearing nothing more but Sumo pants and soccer shoes (!). Terrible :-)

Glyn Moody said...

Maybe as people become more at ease in SL they will start to adopt more adventurous skin colours...