Who will hear you? Who will hear me?

Among some quarters of our expanding virtual worlds, there's a big push towards sound. Live music, voice-chat, and so on. Philip Linden does Town Halls by voice. People want to pull out their headsets and address the people around them. But what if they can't hear you?

You're in a public place, and espy someone you want to talk to. You lean on your push-to-talk key, and say hi, and ask how they are. Meanwhile they just stand there. Are they ignoring you? Are they being rude? Maybe they just can't hear you. Some people are in Second Life for business, they might not have any speakers on their computer -- and headphones are much frowned on in the workplace if there's any chance that they might interfere with you being able to hear co-workers or speak on the phone. The business-person in Second Life probably can't hear you.

The second major class are the handicapped. Second Life has many deaf or hearing-impaired residents -- it's a great environment for them. Likewise some people cannot speak -- or cannot speak the all the languages they can read or write. Some can type a perfectly acceptable grade of English, but have no idea how the language sounds, never having had much opportunity to hear an English-speaker. They probably can't understand you speaking, anyway, let alone respond in sounds you can understand.


The handicapped are among some of Second Life's more loyal clientele. You might have Asperger's Syndrome. You might be deaf, or mute, or in a wheelchair, half-blind, living in an oxygen mask, or unaccountably the wrong color in a society where that's a problem. I've met Second Lifers who are all of these things. Second Life lets you communicate like everyone else. It lets you hear and be heard in ways that are not available to you otherwise. It lets you be someone, just like everyone else, for a change. Quite egalitarian.

 Until you try to participate in a Town Hall with Philip Linden, or someone invites you to a Live-Music event, or offers to chat with you over ventrillo, vivox or skype. Then you're the tearful outcast once again. The burdens and chains of your real life that the starry-eyed visionaries around you will not let you escape from.