Birmingham might not be shit, but on first glance ‘Virtual Birmingham’ is. Launched today is a special version of Birmingham in Second Life — b-scape (yeuch) (link to it in Second Life, you must have Second Life thing installed and a bloody fast computer). From reports of the launch event (from Simon Gray here and others on twitter) and trying to access it myself I can’t see a coherent argument for Second Life itself, or for a public body to spend time on it. I’d love to see this sort of thing work, I don’t want to join the chorus of boos, I want nothing better than to see Birmingham lead the way in technology. Please someone explain to me why this exercise is worthwhile. As I see it Second Life itself is an unbelievably clunky way of interacting with anything. It’s too slow and your actions lag behind your controls that much that even if you’ve found something interesting you spend ages overshooting it and turning round to go back. All buildings become obstacles to your movement, you can’t ‘walk’ so you end up pressing the ‘fly’ button and not being able to see anything as it’s all...
