Stigmergy in Second Life
To experiment with the concept of stigmergy, an application has been developed that enables many different components to be mixed and matched in a variety of ways. This has the added novelty that it involves a four dimensional building technique.
Many variations of building structures can be built from the components
The view was taken that virtual worlds in general, and Second Life in particular, have a great potential future as a unique communication environment.
The problem is: where to start?
It soon became apparent that to use this environment effectively requires a substantial amount of learning. This suggested that the place to start is to create products and services that would make Second Life easier to use - particularly for people who want to use Second Life principally for communication purposes.
The obvious first step would be to make it easy for somebody to create a building structure as a base.
The most frequently used buildings for meetings and communication are:
1) A comfortable home base for intimate associations.
2) A public venue to hold social events, such as parties and dance venues.
3) A lecture hall for educational purposes.
4) A theater for shows and theatrical productions.
5) A shopping mall for exhibiting a range of items.
The idea then became to create some kind of application that would make it easy for anyone to be able to create any of these kinds of building structures - without having to go through a steep learning curve or hire professional help.
Such an application could allow newcomers to Second Life, who were primarily interested in experimenting with the possibilities of communication, to investigate this area immediately, without having to wait until they'd acquired building skills.
This then became the objective of a project that would be based upon stigmergic principles.