N OT TOO LONG AGO, PHILLIP TORRONE sent me an interesting bit of news from the future: a “hot or not” application for rating avatars in virtual worlds. And a month or two later, when Second Life (SL) was featured on the cover of
Business Week, his wife, Beth Goza (who works for
Linden Lab, creator of this increasingly popular virtual world), excitedly showed me her avatar’s picture in the table of contents: “That’s me!” she said.
How long before we see people whose self-image in Second Life (or other virtual worlds) is more meaningful to them than their actual physical body?
How about a “hot or not” that compares my original self with my imagined self? How about mods to make VIRTUAL MEETS REAL. my physical body look more like my imagined one?
Virtual eventually meets real. We already have a
culture of real-world body modification in the form that don’t yet exist in “first life” (aka the real world).
of tattoos, piercings, plastic surgery, steroids, and We already see the first news from that future: a
heck, even regular visits to the gym! Next, we have game called Tringo was invented in Second Life, then
people adding tech: magnetic sensors wired into sold to a game company for redistribution in first life.
fingers, implanted RFID chips, programmable tat- Second Life’s currency, the linden, currently trades
toos that can be changed at will. How long before at about 328 to the dollar (yes, you can convert
computerized vision augmentation, exoskeletons, lindens to real-world currency!), making the current
and even more advanced technology moves from value of the nearly 700 million lindens in circulation
the realm of medical or military experimentation about $2 million. There were more than 5 million
into the body-mod subculture? transactions in April for a total of about $500,000,
These are small indications that “the presentation making the linden perhaps the most widely used
of self in everyday life” (to steal the title of Erving micropayments currency on the planet.
Goffman’s classic psychology book) is undergoing And already the hacks are beginning to show the
radical change. Gone is the day when the only identity shape of possible futures. Nat Torkington, who still
you could have is the one you were born with. Now, works for O’Reilly here in the U.S. but has moved back
you are who you make yourself to be. to New Zealand, speculated that if he could somehow
But new selves aren’t the only things that people be paid in lindens, they might be easier and cheaper
are creating in virtual worlds. They are imagining to convert to New Zealand dollars than U.S. dollars are.
and making stuff. In conventional virtual worlds — What’s more, as long promised by advocates of
massively multiplayer role-playing games — that virtual reality, skills acquired in virtual worlds can
stuff is somewhat constrained by the storyline of well be transferable to real life. Wired News recently
the game: tools, weapons, armor, or whatever. But reported that Yahoo considers a candidate’s World of
in freeform worlds like Second Life, where all the Warcraft experience when making hiring decisions.
vendor provides is raw “land,” the economy of stuff Why? Because to get to high levels in the game, you
is being reinvented from the ground up. Linden Lab need the ability to manage groups and lead teams
has taken the bold step of being clear that anything to achieve shared objectives. Meanwhile, net maven
created by the user belongs to the user — it can Joi Ito recently started a World of Warcraft guild that
be bought or sold. So where other games have is a hangout for net movers and shakers, noting that
underground economies, Second Life’s economy “Wo W is ‘the new golf.’”
is completely upfront. Third Life: The state in which it’s no longer easy to
People are making objects to share or sell: build- tell the difference between first life and second life.
ings, tools, entertainments, pets ... you name it. As
the tools for designing stuff in SL get better, I expect
to see more and more things invented and built in SL
Tim O’Reilly ( tim.oreilly.com) is founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc. See what’s on the O’Reilly Radar at radar.oreilly.com.
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