The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
• Published by: Collins Business February 26, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0061353205
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0061353208
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 0.8 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
For those unfamiliar with the hype or the ridicule, Second Life is a massively multi-user online world, a vast simulation created by ordinary loggers-in using 3-D graphic-design tools from the site's proprietor, Linden Labs. Posing as animated avatars, Residents ramble or fly through the videoscape; they socialize with other avatars, create art, have sex, build cities, open shops and nightclubs, spend Linden Dollars (redeemable for real dollars) and fight wars, all while seated at their computer screens. Au, a journalist who chronicled the site as Linden Labs' reporter-avatar, visits the usual dot-com–saga touchstones. There's the shoestring startup by eccentric geeks; the pilgrimage to Burning Man; the bloviating visionary founder, Philip Rosedale (I'm passionate about Second Life because there doesn't need to be a God); the marketing gobbledygook about Leverag[ing] Metaverse Brands. Au celebrates Second Life as a seedbed for unfettered cybercapitalism, a liberating outlet for the masses' pentup creativity and a lucid dream that erases the virtual-real divide. Alas, in his telling, Second Life's ongoing fantasia—the monkey now perched on the wing screamed 'DIEEEE' as he strafed a well-armed babe in a bikini—feels very much like a recounted dream: creative, certainly, but rather tedious and patently irrelevant. (Mar.)
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New York Post
"Aus book is full of rich details about some of Second Lifes most important people."

Reader Reviews
I have been a resident of Second Life for about nine months and I enjoyed reading about its history and provenance and Mister Au does a fine job of recounting it. But Second Life, like the Web in general, is changing all the time. What may have been accurate a year ago is not very accurate today. It has become a varied, sophisticated, living community. I suppose that it is unreasonable to expect up-to-the-minute accuracy in book of this type. After all from inception to publication, there is a lengthy lag in book production. But, all in all, this is a competent introduction to Second Life. Read the book, join the community. Comment | | (Report this)