Location: Ortaköy Island

I’m fond of the real-life Ortaköy, a neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul and up the Bosporus from the chaotic region around the Blue Mosque and other major attractions.  To American ears, the name of his village-within-the-city sounds like Orta-keh. It’s the sort of crowded-but-neighborly place where crazy (yet amazingly talented—you are or you die) Turkish drivers will slow down to let a befuddled tourist cross the street. That’s not a small favor in city that may have 25 million citizens and the worst traffic, after Cairo, in that part of the world.

So with some hesitancy I clicked a link to visit “Ortaköy in Second Life®.“  I expected a replica of the famous mosque there, one of the most photogenic spots in Istanbul.  Its image often accompanies any story that contrasts the old/new vibe of the city.  The Atatürk Bridge looms above and behind the real-life mosque, and the path to the quay is lined with tourist-trap places selling overstuffed baked potatoes, evil-eye charms, and other essentially Turkish delights.  Right on the water, I found some very fine seafood places. I think the second-best sea bass I’ve eaten in Turkey (the prize goes to a place in Izmir) came from a little restaurant in Ortaköy, where the head waiter, with a flourish, let me (a picky Lebanese-American who knows good fish) peer into his ice-chest and select just the right fish for dinner.

None of those details, of course, awaited me in virtual Ortaköy.  Even the Atatürk Bridge was nowhere to be seen. And the quay, thronged with children playing, men smoking and drinking coffee, people of all ages playing tavla (backgammon), tourists drinking rakı and acting foolish, were gone. Second Life’s Ortaköy is to the real thing what I Am Legend‘s New York is to the Big Apple (well, no rabid bio-war survivors attacked Iggy in virtual Ortaköy).

Like the virtual New Orleans sims I’ve visited, the eerie emptiness weighed on me, but at least in the Big Easy the illusion was sustained. Wander a few houses off the virtual Bosporus and you are in an ultra-modern Turkish shopping mall, with a ubiquitous Second Life outdoor disco nearby. The real Istanbul is full of such old/new juxtapositions,  but the seams are tightly sewn, and often hidden, between them. In Second Life, the seams show.

I can certainly see the appeal of creating such spaces for education. Those learning Turkish could meet real Turks at the virtual coffeehouse and practice using the voice client. Fill this illusion with the noise of human voices, even though a computer, and some magic would happen. That’s a wonderful use of technology for making global connections and teaching languages.  And for places like the virtual Globe Theater, the prospects are bright for doing something students and faculty cannot easily do in real life.

But it’s still only a second-best option. Until Second Life can add the smell of the sea, the murmur of a crowd, the feeling of the breeze from the Bosporus, the aroma of good food, and 400 or 500 avatars in one place, it won’t rival the real place.

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

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