Second Life

I've decided not to join Second Life at the moment, for a number of reasons. The main one is that I don't have the time to spend 'playing' in an alternative world, whereas sites such as Facebook help me keep in touch with friends and past workmates that I don't see in 'real life'. Facebook and LinkedIn are also useful for networking for career and business reasons.

It seems strange to me that I'm not interested in these virtual worlds now, as one of my favourite books that really grabbed my attention when I read it was Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. In the near future, there is an online world called the 'metaverse', where people can interact with one another using 'avatars', their online persona. Sounds rather like Second Life, doesn't it? I like the satire and black humour of the book, but I think Second Life could be just a little dull to spend much time in. I don't doubt that it is technically brilliant, and a fascinating research topic, but I don't want to escape into it.

Recently there was a documentary on SBS about an American mother of four who became involved with an English man whilst playing Second Life. For her it became an obsession, so much so that she would spend hours online chatting while the family tried to get on with normal life around her. In the end she travelled to England to meet her virtual lover who had already lost interest so she had to return home to work out whether her marriage was going to survive. Situations like this show the darker side of our rush to embrace online communities when we perhaps should be spending important time with our 'real life' circle of family and friends. (Hmmm, look at the time that I'm making these posts!)