Location: Keyboard, my office

I am ready to log in, for the first time, to Linden Lab’s Second Life.  When I describe it many listeners shrug and get odd looks on their faces when I say “Second Life isn’t a game. It’s an alternative world.“ Writers William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson imagined these worlds in the 1980s, and now coders and I.T. millionaires like Mitch Kapor went ahead and made what Gibson called a “consensual hallucination.“  Once broadband became common enough, it had to happen.

Unlike other online games, Second Life does not have clear-cut goals or even that many rules.  It is less a competition and more a new way to communicate.  It’s a paradigm-buster like e-mail, chat, or the Web. This may be hyperbole or it may be a moment that we’ll long remember: the first virtual reality for the masses.

Evidence?  A meteoric growth in Second Life’s online population and the million dollars laid down every day by over 20,000 players, some of them running virtual businesses “in-world.“ What are they “buying”?  Imagine virtual real-estate, clothing, vehicles, chips at the casino, and tickets to virtual events. Yet SL is free to use.

Or is this just more hype? Is Second Life just World of Warcraft for bored Yuppies?

When I dive in, what will I find?  Stay tuned.

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