Morgan: Confessions of a Second Life Junkie

Most of my friends are playing Fantasy Football...Not me, for the last week I have been exploring the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) virtual world of Second Life(SL). It was pretty easy to get started, first I registered and paid a small fee to participate. I than downloaded the software to run on my laptop. Our Girl had been talking about SL for a couple of days and I had been reading increasingly frequent stories in the media of people getting rich in SL, so my interest was already piqued. Last year I had read the highly acclaimed Sci-Fi novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson published in 1992 He was almost prophetic in descriptions of "the Street or Metaverse" a virtual world were people lived and conducted business. Like many postmodernist novels, Snow Crash has a chaotic structure that might confuse readers unfamiliar with the genre. It contains many references to history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, geography and philosophy. Set in a world with a political-economic system that has been radically transformed, the novel examines religion along with its social importance, perception of reality versus virtual reality, and the violent and physical nature of humanity.

Influence on the World Wide Web

While Stephenson was not the first to apply the Sanskrit term avatar to online virtual bodies (Habitat did that), the success of Snow Crash popularized the term to the extent that avatar is now the de facto term for this concept in computer games and on the World Wide Web.

Metaverse-like "worlds" in reality include There, Second Life, The Palace, Uru, Dotsoul, Active Worlds and Blaxxun (originally Black Sun prior to being sued by Sun Microsystems). Some massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) also resemble the Metaverse.

According to its creators, the computer game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was inspired by Snow Crash. This does not refer to the story or content of the game (which is deeply rooted in the D'ni/Myst universe), but rather the format of the multiplayer environment, Uru Live.

Many virtual globe programs including NASA World Wind and Google Earth bear a resemblance to the "Earth" software developed by the Central Intelligence Corporation in Snow Crash. One Google Earth co-founder claimed that Google Earth was modeled after Snow Crash, while another co-founder said it was inspired by Powers of Ten.^[10]

Stephenson's vision of the Library of Congress or simply the 'Library' bears a striking resemblance to Wikipedia. In the story, millions of users are constantly uploading fragments of information to a searchable database. Stephenson's concept of the Library differs notably from Wikipedia however, in that users must pay to download most information.^[11] Indeed the novel refers to several people, including Hiro Protagonist, who pursue a career in uploading information in the hopes that it will one day be of value. Although it is unclear whether Stephenson may actually have influenced the development of Wikipedia he clearly predicted the concept.

So it didn't take much to convince me to Log on...I was already hooked. Now when I get home from my real job in my first life, I think...OK I gotta go to work in my second life and make some money. You need a lot of money in Second Life to own property...or build a home. I like the idea of building something of value in virtual reality...but right now I feel like a homeless person in Second Life drifting from Job to Job, Island to Island.