[TIPS] Second Life - Why it's not for me

Everywhere I go, it seems, folks are telling me that I should get into second life, or that there are so many good uses for it in education, etc, etc. I don't buy it.

First, for those of you who may not know what second life is, try these two links: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/31/eveningnews/main1852600.shtml (a cbs news segment - after the 30 second commercial), and http://secondlife.com/showcase/ (some videos from the secondlife site itself)

From my perspective, yes, I know that there are some wonderful virtual sites in there (http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Top_20_Educational_Locations_in_Second_Life) but there is a lot of smut in there, as well. (http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2005/12/69878) But, we're talking about an institution that is still blocking delicious, and flickr, and all blogs, and all wikis, for crying out loud. Second life will NEVER fly in public schools. You won't find a tech director anywhere who will want to devote bandwidth to second life, even if we DID somehow manage to get past the smut part. It just won't happen.I know of schools who won't allow Google Earth because of the bandwidth We think they're going to allow SecondLife? Not in THIS life, they won't.

So, while there may be some fun stuff to do in there, I'll continue to focus on things that I think WILL get into schools. Sorry, guys.