Are you ready for a Second Life?

June 27, 2007

Are you Ready for a Second Life?
An amazing moment in Peter Seller’s “Being There” is when Sellers as Chauncy Gardener emerges from his cloistered residence into a now rough neighborhood. Chauncy has lived a life in front of a television set and carries his remote control. He’s accosted by a couple of black hoodlums. When he doesn’t like what he sees in the toughs he’s met he tries to change the channel to something else. His clicker doesn’t work. He has entered a new reality.
You, however, are promised a new reality in the widely played virtual world called “Second Life.” “Second Life” allows people to assume personalities and appearances of their own making. As they explore this simulated world they may bump into others, make contact, develop relationships, even arrange for cyber sex. The site is now visited by over 5.5 million people around the world.
Developed in 2003 by physicist Philip Rosedale, the “Second Life” simulation is run out of Linden labs in California. For details, visit www.secondlife.com to download the free software. You’ll need high speed service and graphic capability to make it work and it’s not yet configured for VISTA, though Apple users can enter, too. Participants may visit free or pay a monthly fee.
“ Second Life” is a logical progression that combines chat rooms like MySpace where people use aliases with computer games complete with landscapes and interaction with other anonymous players. The difference is that in “Second Life” you enter a world created by the other players. In this simulated world you can build your own house, for instance. One player is constructing Portland’s 21st avenue complete with shops and a movie theater.
Der Spiegel, the German equivalent of Time Magazine, described “Second Life” in a lengthy article in a February issue. The German authors compared “Second Life” to a masked ball in which the players assume false identities for the length of the party. Though American participants are the largest group of users, Germany is second. This is a world-wide phenomenon.
If you are a paraplegic imprisoned in a damaged body, “Second Life” gives you a means of escape. If the life you live is disagreeable, “Second Life” provides an outlet for your frustrations and fantasies.
Participants use Linden dollars, so-named after the laboratory where the simulation originates. They have a currency equivalence, about 280 Linden dollars to one U.S. dollar. You use PayPal or a credit card to purchase these imaginary dollars, but they can be converted back to real dollars. Should you conduct a profitable business in “Second Life” and transfer the funds to your U.S. dollar account, the IRS considers the profits taxable.
Companies like IBM have jumped on the bandwagon and established businesses in “Second Life.” You can order a pizza in this cyber world and have a real one delivered to your real life home. Therein lies the blurring of the boundary between the real world and the simulated “Second Life.”
Kids today now spend more time playing computer games than they do watching television. Some teenagers interviewed about their personal needs have declared they have an inability to relate to others face-to-face. In a world of simulated gaming, cyber games, text messaging, and isolation, interpersonal relationships become, well, unreal.
This new cyber world lends new meaning to the expression “get real.”
The trouble is, when you can no longer tell the difference between the game and real life, you are approaching a state of hallucination bordering on insanity. The boy who went from a shoot-em-dead computer game to the actual killing of five schoolmates with as many unerring shots to the head obviously went over the edge. Similar simulations are used to train Marines to kill in Iraq. Trouble is, the Iraqis shoot back. Unlike those computer games where you get up after being shot, in Iraq if you’re dead, you’re dead.
I can see those graduate students, raised on computers, homing in on “Second Life” for a slew of Ph.D. theses about its world-wide impact. Chauncy Gardener, raised in front of a television set, learned to mimic politicians. In the film “Being There” he bamboozled the Washington power brokers in a delightful satire. If the Sellers character emerged today, he might find a community of people whose alter egos have come to dominate their lives, too.
What is real and what is simulation? And would you rather be a cyber space super hero or that functionary stuck in an office cubicle doing mundane tasks? After all, you might make more U.S. dollars doing business in Linden dollars than you earn in that salary. We’re not in Kansas anymore. We have entered Oz. How long before one “masked” player arranges to have a real-life tryst with another only to find out it’s their own spouse, who also has a “second life”?
In the meantime, while “Second Life” players are escaping, the “real” world goes on. I am reminded of the fall of Rome when the barbarians entered the Senate. Unable to adapt to the new reality of the invasion, the Romans were simply slaughtered.