The Disney World: The Second Life Environment
Virtual WORLD
The Second Life Environment
The environment in Second Life will be familiar to anyone who has played The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, visited Disney World or read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. But make no mistake. This isn't a game. It is potentially a whole new Net. Reuters has opened a news bureau in Second Life and interviewed such luminaries as Arianna Huffington there. Sundance held a screening of the movie Strange Culture simultaneously in the real world and in Second Life. The British Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a pop concert within Second Life. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and 300 of his executives hold global virtual reality business meetings there - "I'll have my avatar call your avatar" - and serious political candidates
like California congressman George Miller and Virginia Governor Mark Warner have established Second Life identities to hold political rallies and campaign for office.The list of corporations doing business in-world as the residents call it, include Microsoft, Warner Brothers, Nike, Major League Baseball, Dell, Adidas, General Motors and Circuit City, all drawn by a new way to move product.
Second Life was created in 2003 by Philip Rosedale, the former top tech at RealNetworks. It's operated by his Linden Labs, a San Francisco boutique corporation that has a Who's Who of web havies beating down the door to invest. Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's technology architect Ray Ozzie all got in on the ground floor. You may encounter any or all of them in Second Life. Rosedale's avatar is easily recognizable by his leather chaps over pizza explosion briefs and the huge lips on his black tee-shirt.
About $900,000 worth of business is transacted a day among the more than 3 million residents. Most is done by major corporations but some 17,000 Second Life residents are reported to be making at least $1000 a month. Some have carved out full time jobs in Second Life as traders or designers. And Second Life is not a playground, as analysts suggest that avid users skew to a median age of 30.
Get a Second Life!
Second Life is a sophisticated, online 3D digital world that could be the biggest thing in cyberspace since sliced electrons -- or the loudest dud since Pets.com. It's more than just another Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)... think MySpace meets AOL in a global 3D virtual reality environment.
Second Life is populated by customizable onscreen characters (called avatars) who represent individual members. There are no assigned roles. The avatars, with Star-Warsian pseudonyms like Trulia Fivestorm and Republikos Quisling, walk, fly or teleport through the Second Life Metaverse -- meeting, interacting, playing, building, dating, buying and selling. It's those last two, buying and selling, that have caught the imagination of the Internet's heaviest hitters, who see Second Life as the possible future of online commerce.
Second Life
The Second Life Environment
The environment in Second Life will be familiar to anyone who has played The Sims, Grand Theft Auto, visited Disney World or read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. But make no mistake. This isn't a game. It is potentially a whole new Net. Reuters has opened a news bureau in Second Life and interviewed such luminaries as Arianna Huffington there. Sundance held a screening of the movie Strange Culture simultaneously in the real world and in Second Life. The British Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a pop concert within Second Life. IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and 300 of his executives hold global virtual reality business meetings there - "I'll have my avatar call your avatar" - and serious political candidates
like California congressman George Miller and Virginia Governor Mark Warner have established Second Life identities to hold political rallies and campaign for office.The list of corporations doing business in-world as the residents call it, include Microsoft, Warner Brothers, Nike, Major League Baseball, Dell, Adidas, General Motors and Circuit City, all drawn by a new way to move product.
Second Life was created in 2003 by Philip Rosedale, the former top tech at RealNetworks. It's operated by his Linden Labs, a San Francisco boutique corporation that has a Who's Who of web havies beating down the door to invest. Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Microsoft's technology architect Ray Ozzie all got in on the ground floor. You may encounter any or all of them in Second Life. Rosedale's avatar is easily recognizable by his leather chaps over pizza explosion briefs and the huge lips on his black tee-shirt.
About $900,000 worth of business is transacted a day among the more than 3 million residents. Most is done by major corporations but some 17,000 Second Life residents are reported to be making at least $1000 a month. Some have carved out full time jobs in Second Life as traders or designers. And Second Life is not a playground, as analysts suggest that avid users skew to a median age of 30.
Get a Second Life!
Second Life is a sophisticated, online 3D digital world that could be the biggest thing in cyberspace since sliced electrons -- or the loudest dud since Pets.com. It's more than just another Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)... think MySpace meets AOL in a global 3D virtual reality environment.
Second Life is populated by customizable onscreen characters (called avatars) who represent individual members. There are no assigned roles. The avatars, with Star-Warsian pseudonyms like Trulia Fivestorm and Republikos Quisling, walk, fly or teleport through the Second Life Metaverse -- meeting, interacting, playing, building, dating, buying and selling. It's those last two, buying and selling, that have caught the imagination of the Internet's heaviest hitters, who see Second Life as the possible future of online commerce.
Second Life