Second Life is a web-based 3-D game where members or "residents" build their own life in the second "world." It was started in 2003 and now has over 1 million "residents."
People build homes there, start business, take classes, and seek out entertainment. Residents can buy, sell, or trade things in the marketplace by using Linden dollars that can be converted to US dollars at currency exchanges. As double lives tend to be, some of the stuff there seems seedy, but there are some churches. Here's a cathedral that was built there:
Copyright 2006, Linden Research, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Ah, but this is just a enormous and irrelevant distraction just waiting to suck me into a virtual reality neverland, you say?
Maybe not...
Many real worlds companies have set up shop in Second Life, and now the first publisher is checking it out. According to this article:
Penguin, however, is the first major publisher to dip its toe into
the virtual world and, appropriately, it has chosen Neal Stephenson's
Snow Crash as the book with which to test the waters. With its
invention of the notion of a "metaverse" (a contraction of
"metaphysical universe") it is acknowledged as the inspiration behind
Second Life and other virtual worlds.
Penguin
worked with the London-based virtual world design agency Rivers Run Red
to create an in-world version of the book - this offers readers
excerpts of the text, an audio clip and a link which clicks through to
a dedicated Second Life page on the Penguin website, complete with the
opportunity to buy the book at a discount. They are now developing a
virtual bookshelf of other Penguin titles for the Second Life resident.
MySpace, YouTube, Second Life -- all parts of the brave new world of book promotion.