Reading Second Life: the official guide

Yesterday I received my copy of Second Life: the official guide by Rymaszewski et al. Purchased online for $1.65, the book appeared to have never been opened. Thus, I cracked the spine and began reading Chapter 1, What is Second Life? After only a few pages I began to enjoy the text and found that I had learned several useful tidbits. While not surprising, it was exciting to recognize that nearly all of the content of Second Life is user-created and that really Second Life can and should provide anything for which the user is looking. After a brief introduction, Chapter 1 delved into a bit of Second Life history noting that the idea was conceived by Philip Rosedale in 1991. Beta testing began in 2002 and “on June 23^rd, 2003 Second life went live.” (p. 4) After an actual revolution against the original tax system, new tax and time systems were introduced.

After a brief history, Rymaszewski et. al delve into the details of how Second Life works. I learned that within this virtual world, sims (as we have come to understand are simulations) actually refer to regions. I became educated about how a user can create objects and that Second Life actually keeps track of all of these objects (and, of course, all avatars) by assigning them unique identifiers. I learned that objects can be built from solids called prims and that prims can be made to take on whatever shape you like. Further coverage concerned the local currency, called the Linden dollar. At the time that the book was written the US $ was worth 270 Lindens. I was stunned at the opportunities to make money, sell objects and even score free stuff! Thus, when faced with the section in the book entitled What to Do With Your New Life?, I felt that the answers were limitless. However, for me the most poignant passage in this section was, “It’s also a great place to interact with people not just one-on-one, but via group instant messaging, where dozens or even hundreds can participate in live conversation – an important communication platform that’s become more in important in recent years as the population has grown.” This passage gave me hope that Second Life may just be a good forum for conducting interviews for educational research.