Danny Fekete is studying education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, appropriately. 
Notes from the Field
I’ve been spending more and more time in Second Life as I prepare to do my fieldwork for my thesis, and I’m enjoying it much more than I expected. A few days ago I stumbled onto a community called Thothica, full of folks with academic and casual interests in philosophy, science, literature, and education—this is much more readily appealing to me than the live music, bars, and shopping I’ve mainly seen. When I arrived at the community’s parcel of space, I joined in listening to a live reading from the last chapter of Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; the reader, Elaine Lorefield, does public readings in the space twice a week—she’s read Stranger to members of the community from start to just about finish over the last few months (the unabridged version, even!) and weekly reads thought-provoking short stories with discussion to follow. Tonight, we heard “Ephemera” by Steve Rasnic Tem, and then had a two-hour conversation that ranged from curacy to e-reading to open access. All the stuff I love.
What thrills me about this is how readily the experience became wholly legitimate and embodied—how there was almost no distracting contemplation about the “inauthenticity” of the “virtual experience.” Practically speaking, Elaine and the rest of us were sitting at our computers (dotted in this case across Canada and the US, as far as I know) while she read into a headset from her Kindle. It may as well have been a conference call. But, “in-world,” we’d assembled at the community’s library in Thothica at the scheduled time, took seats in the circle of couches and armchairs by the fire (in a configuration damned reminiscent of an actual gathering of this sort, with clustering around the reader and avoidance of text-chatting to other members or walking in front of her, even though these things in no way had an impact on the content delivery), and we listened for about an hour and a half. It was a cultural event rather than an audiobook. Understand, when I say the following, that I’ve been a long-time player of multiplayer games, including socially rich MMOs like Ultima Online in its heyday; I know that this sounds worrisome to people both with gaming experience and on the outside looking in, but I honestly concluded the evening feeling as if I’d spent a night out.
I know the experience is more transparent for me than others because of my fluency with the interface and my fast typing speed, but I really, really see this as a viable educational environment. Before today, I would have been much more cynical when one of the founding Thothica members described the space to me as a sort of campus pub. (Maybe active drinkers could disagree more reasonably.) Second Life is the earliest example I know of as a mainstream “free-to-play” game, so if anyone wants to give it a shot (and see if I’m just bonkers), let me know, and you can join me in the field. There’s a sonnet writing and discussion group on Sunday…
