Bravo Steve!!! I couldn't agree with you more. I also heard about second life and thought - Sheesh! I can barely manage my current life with any aplomb, how the heck am I supposed to add an entire new one??

I'm sure I'll be bashed for this, but I can't help but think that this "online life" concept is a bit of a cop out for people who can't (for whatever reason) live their current lives fully. Personally, I think we should pay more attention to living our "live" lives than creating "online" ones.

But, hey, that's just me. As you say, everyone should do what works for them.

Me? I'm with you Steve - give me more food, more drink, more love, more laughter...in the physical world. All of those are just more enjoyable when they're "real".

Kristen:

You and me . . . we're the same. I'm sure I'll get bashed, too . . . but it is what it is. I can't imagine even a marginally good experience in a life online matching up to a even the most mediocre experience in real life.

I can understand why businesses are rushing to Second Life. If there is money to be made off these sad people, then by all means someone should make it.

But I worry about the individuals who actually spend hours out there each day. I worry about them, and what they mean to the future of our society.

It's bad enough that so many kids spend so much time in MySpace that they don't know how to act in real life. Now we're giving them a whole world where they can be someone else and act without consequences.

It's scary.

Steve C.

Count me among the Luddites. Heck, I haven't even seen fit to acquire an iPod yet. If Shel is a year ahead of the times, I'm surely at least a decade behind. Every once in a while, I experience a pang of regret about this, but the other 99 percent of the time I'm as content as anyone has a right to be. What with the wife, the three kids, the job, the band and playing and coaching sports, the last thing I need is a second life. Maybe a clone to help me handle the first one ...
Greg

An yet, there was a time when you vociferousily eschewed participating in the PRSIG for many of the same reasons. Remember?

If Second Life, or anything else for that matter, becomes important enough, you'll find a way make it part of your "real" life.

I really like the E.B. White quote, BTW, but have a slightly different take on it. I think the best thing would be to make "improving" the world one way of "enjoying" the world.

Craig

I will show my age by going against the grain here, but I am in fact a huge proponent of the avatar world.

I have been playing MMORPGs since the late 1990's. This hellatious acronym stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games.

Essentially these games are GUI Dungeons & Dragons. Remember the four dorks in HS that spent Saturday night around a card table in their parent's basement with brooms at their side wrapped in tin foil to resemble swords? OK, now imagine a table that can have 4 million nerds sitting around it. That is in fact the latest count of people playing the most popular MMORPG out there World of Warcraft.

I love computer games, always have. I am currently in my early thirties and they have yet to lose their allure. My father and I continually debate which one of us is wasting more time. He contends that his hours spent in front of the TV are justified becasue he is being told a story, I contend that my hours in front of the computer are far more virtuous becasue I am creating a story. In the end we are both acheiving the same goal; escapism.

Second Life continues the evolution of the MMORPG expierience. I'll even go one step further to say that this is just another step in entertainment evolution. This is the great great great great grandfather of the Holodeck on Star Trek. Who wouldn't one day want to sit down with one of their favorite idols in history, even if it was a computer simulation. I would gladly spend an hour with a holo Jessica Simpson (as opposed to the real life hollow Jessica Simpson)if the fascmile was close to real life. Imagination and projection of the abstract is what seperates us from the animals.

Love Second Life or hate it. It doesn't matter, it all boils down to how you enjoy spending your time. But make no mistake as technolgy progresses and the world keeps getting a little scarier each year, we will see Second Life and its predecessors continue to flourish.

Sorry you missed the Cubs' virtual championship today, Steve. My avatar tells me Jenkins pitched a no-hitter and Banks knocked in the winning run.

Pat

Steve,

I volunteer to help you with the Italian lessons.

Quando lo vuole, chi sentiamo. (Whenever you want it, we'll be in touch).

Keep living large!

I think the TV- computer stuff is basically the same, but i think that the computer time is probably at least spent doing a little more thinking, using more creative energy. I also have no interest in a second life, i try to make my real life as fun and rewarding as possible, and have no interest in pretending to be someone i am not. At least consciously. Sometimes the whiskey does it while i am not paying attention!
also ipodless.

Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve.

First "no time for podcasts" and now "no time for a second life, I'm too busy with my first one." (I've never heard THAT one before!)

We need to talk, Steve. There are rational explanations for all this. Second Life isn't distinct from my first life, it's part of it and in many ways makes it easier and saves me time.

Oh, and as for no time to listen to podcasts: You never do laundry? Go for a walk? (Maybe you need a dog.) Sit in airports or on planes? take the bus? The beauty of audio, Steve, is the ability to listen while you're doing something else.

Hey Steve - $690,950 spent in the last 24 hours. That's what it says on the home page when you open it. THAT's why businesses are out there. I had never heard of second life until I read about here, and I'm a geek. (But I guess I am a geek with a very busy first life, so that may be why)

Greg - get an iPod - you'll be happy you did. Or better yet, go XM satellite. Even as a geek I'm somewhere in between "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Minority Report" - I don't subscribe to all of the latest techie stuff. But my love for music and the ease of acquiring it digitally ultimately won out.

On a religious bender I could say that Second Life is nothing more than a covetous nation. Yet another way for people to want what they do not have all the while not appreciating what they do have. MMORPG's have their place, and I laughed my ass off as much as the next guy when South Park spoofed WoW - but even then, if it becomes more than a game to a person, it's unhealthy. Anything in excess is.

I personally cannot fathom spending real money on some piece of fake real estate any more than I can imagine putting that same money on a crap's table. One can argue that there is definite money to be made in 2nd life, while the other is truly a gamble. But I have goals and dreams in this life, and truly no time or money to waste in any virtual world. Eat a virtual meal? Scuba in virtual waters? Dance in a virtual club? Shop in a virtual store?

No thanks. I'll save my money for the real life trip to the wine country of Italy, my island vacation in the Caribbean, and the food I'll eat on my long awaited cruise in the Mediterranean.

The $690,950 spent in the last 24hrs. were Linden dollars. You have to divide by 240. That is $2,878 real dollars. I imagine that this figure also includes the money spent on renting the rather expensive private islands and properties.

This article is dead on. Spending any significant amount of your life in SL is really just sad. Life is short and we should make the most of every second we've got.

Here's a good test questions, 'If you were given 6 months to live, would you immediately log in to second life, or would you do something else?'

I don't know - it specifically says US$ Spent in the last 24hrs...gives the LindeX activity, too, which is less.

Adam - great question.

Shel . . .Shel, Shel, Shel. My mentor and friend.

I know why YOU are out there. You're going to make money, somehow. I know why businesses are out there. They're going to make money, somehow.

What I DON'T know is why 1.4 million individuals are out there, living second lives instead of focusing on their first one.

I'm not dismissing the Second Life thing. I think it's going to be huge, and if there's a way you can run your business using this technology, more power to you.

But . . . I agree with Adam. How sad that so many people are so afraid of real life that they would rather get a mortgage, meet people, have friends, and do other life-related things ONLINE than in real life.

Adam, I love you. Great question: It's hard to imagine anyone with limited time spending even one second in a virtual world, rather than the real world.

Steve C.

>>What I DON'T know is why 1.4 million individuals are out there, living second lives instead of focusing on their first one.

But...but Steve, this is somewhat the same argument you (and others) made a decade ago when a lot of us were spending (wasting, I believe was the Ragan line) time talking in CompuServe. And yet, it was through the PRSIG that I met, and became friends with Shel. And Charles, and Pete Shinbach, and Michael Rudnick, and Dan Janal, and Carol Goman, and John Gerstner, and Neville, Jim Horton, Tudor Williams, Pete Paulson, Sheri Rosen, Jeri Cartwright, Allen Jenkins, Victoria Mellor, Tom Mucciolo, Ron Shewchuck, Sharon Bond, Eric Eggertson, and about 100 or so others that I probably wouldn't have met.

And in a round about way its how our paths crossed.

I've only visited SL and Crayonville a few times. I don't envision that I'll be spending a whole lot of time there except for what is necessary to do online what I've always done - make connections, share information and knowledge, expand my mind, learn new things, gain a global perspective on new ideas, viewpoints, stay up to date on emerging technologies etc...etc...

More to the point, why would anyone want to turn their back on such a rich experience, even if it's only to explore from time to time?

Steve:

I see that George Clooney has just been named the "Sexiest Man Alive" for the second time, as was his friend and occasional co-star, Brad Pitt.

But in my "Second Life," I nominated you for the honor of "Sexiest Man in Second Life" - and guess what? My avatar tells me you won. No surprise; I'm just sayin'.

Pat

Steve,

I have to agree with a couple of items on your list (not watching reality TV or lining up to go into any club), but I see a place for Second Life. I don't want Second Life to replace my real life (I enjoy eating real food, quaffing real wine and talking to real people), but I plan to use it as a tool, much like I use e-mail and the Internet now. For example, the organziation I work for has members spread out over a large geographic area. I have to admit that I've only visited Second Life a couple of times, but I think some aspect of it may allow us to run training sessions or meetings without the time and expense of travel. Unfortunately, I have to spend part of my first life figuring out how to use Second Life.

First, the 1.4 million is really misleading. That's the number of accounts that have been created. Many SL devotees have created multiple accounts. Many, like me, went to try it, found it ridiculous, and never went back. A more accurate number of freaky floaters might be 300K, which makes it not only weird, but largely irrelevant.

As I've said to friends and fellow PR bloggers, "Second Life is for those without an adequate first life...plain and simple."

I like your list Steve...keep it up. Here's part of mine: hiking a Colorado trail with my dogs at sunrise, live jazz anywhere, great coffee on a busy street corner, killer conversations about politics over red wine with friends, decadent hotel rooms with 24-hour room service, winding mountain roads and full leathers on a Sunday morning with my Ducati club, coaching my 10 year-old Little League team...and anything else that involves "reality."

Perhaps in the second life I can make a better apple pie? I may look into it for next year for Thanksgiving given this year's outcome...

Intimacy, connection, and revealing the inner human are all things successful blogs help their writers to achieve with their audiences, and the reason why people come back for more.

blogging, podcasting, video logging and now 3D virtual worlds. I think all of these online tools are ways for people to connect with one another.

Some people prefer text (blogging) others audio (podcasting) or moving pictures (vlogging). What's important about each of them is how they reveal something about the publisher to the audience.

While I agree that Second Life is difficult to use when you compare setting up a blog. If you cannot meet someone in person, maybe meeting him or her in a 3D world is the next best thing. Second Life might not be perfect but I think that we are going to see a lot more use of 3D environments in the future.

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