NMC 2007 - Friday Morning

Phillip Long over at MIT has a lot to say about institutions preparing to enter Second Life. The school's initial foray into that virtual world was part of an attempt to get freshmen into the right dorms. At MIT, you don't pick your final residence hall until you've been on campus for three weeks. Makes for a better long term match if you can see the place and get to know the character of the residents before you commit to the place for the entire year.

It looked like SL might be a likely place to model those spaces and somehow impart the simulations with a sense of the nature of the places. They haven't quite realized that project yet, but they have discovered a great deal about the legal and political implications of extending MIT into the virtual community of SL.

To begin with, the MIT IP Council refused to allow him to enter into the standard SL Terms of Service. Seems MIT doesn't like any agreement that completely indemnifies a service provider from harm when that service provider still plays a considerable role in the deliver of the service. Also, Linden Labs requires that any disputes be settled in a San Francisco court; MIT requires that cases be heard in a court in Cambridge, MA - again, stalemate. Ultimately, Phillip got around the IP Council's objections by renting SL space indirectly through the NMC. Now the indemnification is shared between MIT and NMC, and any court issues are between Linden and NMC - much more palatable to the school. Presumably, the NMC stands ready to offer this fronting service to other schools, as well.

One potential issue that was particularly easy to resolve was the rules of conduct to be applied to visitors to the MIT island. As it was ultimately determined, the rules in SL are essentially the same as in RL. Specifically, the rules that already apply to the use of other MIT data services - e-mail, Web sites access & creation, newsgroup participation, listservs, etc. - apply here, too. Nothing to change, nothing to add.

They're going to develop one quarter of their island with important MIT buildings and settings, particularly their iconic Building 10. There'll be visitor information and a Hack Museum (something extremely central to the MIT mystique). This area will also be publicly accessible. The rest of the island will be reserved for students and faculty, and will be MIT accessible, only. A request and a rationale are required for a land grant, but anyone is welcome to make use of the virtual space.

There's already a significant SL project list in store for MIT, including a Media Theory and Methods class from New Media guru Henry Jenkins. Phillip also hopes to see significant intersection of virtual and physical worlds, that is, actions in real life affecting virtual objects and spaces in SL and vice-versa. How do you operate within a virtual space while you continue to conduct your real life? Or more interestingly, how do you instrument your real body to inform you SL avatar?

There's much to consider here...

Update: Phillip's slide show.