Recently, there have been some discussions about immersion and augmentation in Second Life. They are presented as a continuum. Either you focus on an immersive experience of Second Life, where your avatar takes on a life of its own, and the role of technology in mediating the experience becomes less and less important, or you focus on using the technology to augment your communication with other people in Second Life.

Some augmentation folks view immersion as a subset of augmentation and some immersion folks view augmentation as a subset of immersion. In thinking about it, I wonder if Immersion and Augmentation are different ends of a continuum, or if they are orthogonal axis.

Augmentation and Immersion, originally uploaded by Aldon.

In the lower left corner, we find people who are neither particularly immersed in Second Life nor particularly good at using Second Life to augment their communication. These are people just starting out in Second Life, the Noobies.

Some people become more and more immersed in Second Life. Those that become immersed without augmenting their communications become the Spectators, swept up in the wonderful immersive environment. These people become more adept at navigating in Second Life, at using the camera angles, mouselook and other tools to get the most out of their experience in Second Life. They may enhance their own avatars as part of their effort to be more immersed in the environment.

Those that focus on augmenting their communications in Second Life become the Performers. Some people participate in Second Life, performing, being interviewed, speaking on panels. They take advantage of groups, voice chat, and other tools to communicate more effectively. They may also enhance the appearance of their avatars, but they do this to communicate more about themselves as opposed to as part of an effort to become more immersed in the environment.

Yet really, none of us exist on just one axis or the other, and we spend different amounts of time enhancing our ability to communicate with Second Life as well as our ability to immerse ourselves in Second Life. With that, you get people who actively role-play in Second Life. They combine both the immersive and the augmentive aspects of Second Life.

So are immersion and augmentation orthogonal axis, instead of a continuum? Where do you exist on such a plane? How does it change your perspective on being in Second Life? Or, am I looking at things completely wrong?