A Second (Virtual) Life, For Just $10 a Month

by Andrew Bast

If, according to Ray Kurzweil, it's only going to be a decade before computers disappear and are simply ingrained into our daily existence, the virtual reality systems around today are only a glimpse of how we could live by 2025.

Second Life, a company that offers you the opportunity to conjure and then act out an alternate reality of your own (it's not just a catchy title), already has a half-million inhabitants, each coughing up $10 a month. Really, is there a better deal out there?

(You can join for free, but then you're relegated to serf-status. You can't buy land, and in turn, you can't entertain. Drat!)

So there's real estate (and an entire economy around the virtual society), community bingo, virtual clothing design, and yes, a thriving social scene. Unfortunately, it seems that even in virtual reality there's still no escape from personal ads.

Not suprisingly, there are plenty of business models already building their way into Second Life -- in the same way major brands are buying marketing space in video games, there's plenty of billboard space (hopefully no televisions!) in this alternate virtual universe.

I'd love to take a stab at a Second Life--though it's hard to make enough time for one, much less a second, life--for one chief reason: what kind of society evolves in these virtual spaces? Are there laws? And if there are, do people obey them? What's more, why in the world would anyone, in a world devoid of consequence and essentially built purely for pleasure, ever do anything but, err, drink and be merry?

(Second Life image taken from the company's website.)

Comments

[Bryan]

Can you have a second life in the second life, and so on? I guess nothing's stopping you. I should probably get a "first life" first.

[rikomatic]

Actually you can have a very rich second life even with the free account. You can still participate in all of the live music events, shopping, museums, discussion groups, gaming, and more without having to shell out for the deluxe account.

It's certainly not for everyone. But it's a fascinating experiment in virtualized existence.