The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World [Hardcover]

Wagner James Au (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2008

The wholly virtual world known as Second Life has attracted more than a million active users, millions of dollars, and created its own—very real—economy.

The Making of Second Life is the behind-the-scenes story of the Web 2.0 revolution's most improbable enterprise: the creation of a virtual 3-D world with its own industries, culture, and social systems. Now the toast of the Internet economy, and the subject of countless news articles, profiles, and television shows, Second Life is usually known for the wealth of real-world companies (Reuters, Pontiac, IBM) that have created "virtual offices" within it, and the number of users ("avatars") who have become wealthy through their user-created content.

What sets Second Life apart from other online worlds, and what has made it such a success (one million-plus monthly users and growing) is its simple user-centered philosophy. Instead of attempting to control the activities of those who enter it, the creators of Second Life turned them loose: users (also known as Residents) own the rights to the intellectual content they create in-world, and the in-world currency of Linden Dollars is freely exchangeable for U.S. currency. Residents have responded by generating millions of dollars of economic activity through their in-world designs and purchases—currently, the Second Life economy averages more than one million U.S. dollars in transactions every day, while dozens of real-world companies and projects have evolved and developed around content originated in Second Life.

Wagner James Au explores the long, implausible road behind that success, and looks at the road ahead, where many believe that user-created worlds like Second Life will become the Net's next generation and the fulcrum for a revolution in the way we shop, work, and interact. Au's story is narrated from both within the corporate offices of Linden Lab, Second Life's creator, and from within Second Life itself, revealing all the fascinating, outrageous, brilliant, and aggravating personalities who make Second Life a very real place­—and an illuminating mirror on the real (physical) world. Au writes about the wars they fought (sometimes literally), the transformations they underwent, the empires of land and commerce they developed, and above all, the collaborative creativity that makes their society an imperfect utopia, better in some ways than the one beyond their computer screens.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For those unfamiliar with the hype or the ridicule, Second Life is a massively multi-user online world, a vast simulation created by ordinary loggers-in using 3-D graphic-design tools from the site's proprietor, Linden Labs. Posing as animated avatars, Residents ramble or fly through the videoscape; they socialize with other avatars, create art, have sex, build cities, open shops and nightclubs, spend Linden Dollars (redeemable for real dollars) and fight wars, all while seated at their computer screens. Au, a journalist who chronicled the site as Linden Labs' reporter-avatar, visits the usual dot-com–saga touchstones. There's the shoestring startup by eccentric geeks; the pilgrimage to Burning Man; the bloviating visionary founder, Philip Rosedale (I'm passionate about Second Life because there doesn't need to be a God); the marketing gobbledygook about Leverag[ing] Metaverse Brands. Au celebrates Second Life as a seedbed for unfettered cybercapitalism, a liberating outlet for the masses' pentup creativity and a lucid dream that erases the virtual-real divide. Alas, in his telling, Second Life's ongoing fantasia—the monkey now perched on the wing screamed 'DIEEEE' as he strafed a well-armed babe in a bikini—feels very much like a recounted dream: creative, certainly, but rather tedious and patently irrelevant. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Au, who has written feature articles for the Los Angeles Times and online magazines such as Salon, acted as the embedded journalist during the first three years of the ever popular online world Second Life. As opposed to other virtual realities, such as The Simms, the residents of Second Life have the full power to cocreate themselves and the environment in which they live, building entire cities that morph continuously as members expand on each other’s work. The epitome of Web 2.0, where users take an active role in creating content, Second Life has all the features of real life and more: money, real estate, bars and other hangouts, deeply developed personal relationships, even a quirky version of sex. Possibilities are only restrained by the imagination. Au charts the course of the evolution of Second Life from an idea in its creators’ minds to the megahit that it is today, with many surprising revelations on the possibilities that unfold within this virtual reality. --David Siegfried

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: HarperBusiness (February 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061353205
• ISBN-13: 978-0061353208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,079,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting overview of a very dynamic space, August 27, 2008

By 

Mark T Tomczak - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World (Hardcover)

It can be hard to justify buying a book about a place as fluid and temporal as Second Life. In a world with a constantly-shifting, user-created landscape, what could one write that will be of any use in the next few years?

Given this challenge, Wagner James Au crafts an excellent book about the history and nature of Second Life. Leveraging his status as a former employee and virtual embedded journalist, Au shares with the reader his well-researched subjective viewpoint into a world of fluid forms and fluid personalities. Touching on such topics as the economy, socialization, politics, the nature of self, and the interaction between the real world and the artificial one, the book weaves a narrative that is one part company history, one part personal experience, and one part industry commentary.

While the book overall is an interesting read, I found myself having to swallow some significant typos and informational errors. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I feel the book really could have used a second editorial pass and some fact-checking (for instance, the 3D embedded content viewer inDuality ([...]) is made by Pelican Crossing, not Penguin Crossing). Print is not the web, and sadly, once one publishes an edition of a book with this many errors, it's published forever.

But if you have a tolerance for typos and a willingness to do your own fact-checking (which will be necessary anyway, given the changeable nature of the subject matter), this book is a good read and can serve as a starting point for further forays into the field of 3D interactive worlds, and Second Life specifically.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from Eshi Otawara, October 1, 2008

By 

Irena Mandic "Eshi Otawara" (FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World (Hardcover)

The Making of Second Life is THE book you want to read before any other book about Second Life. Whether you are a 'Second Lifer' or just a curious review reader without any Second Life experience- this book is a must read for anyone even remotely interested in simulated 3d experiences of any kind or even ways of transcending the human embodiment into flesh. It will give you a great insight into what Second Life is (do NOT assume upon the name!), and how Second Life became what it is today. From the conception of the idea, formation of Linden Lab, first residents experiences, romance, protests, war...a fantastic and upbeat read that doesn't ever stray away into 'too much geek talk' or leave you with questions unanswered. Wagner James Au (virtually responsive to the name Hamlet Au) has made a great contribution to the history of human virtuality by writing this book. Thank you.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside Information, June 18, 2008

By 

J. Kinkley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World (Hardcover)

Wagner James Au, as both journalist and end-user, is privy to two intertwining histories: that of the California startup Linden Lab and the rapidly expanding online virtual world of Second Life. His "The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World" is a largely anecdotal account of these two histories. Whether by eye witness or a careful, thorough reading of Second Life's periphery blogosphere, Au does a nice job of synopsizing key moments in the evolution of Linden Lab and Second Life. He also qualifies his reporting by theorizing characteristics of human behavior in avatar form, i.e. his concept of Mirrored Flourishing where the user improves his or her physical world standing through interaction with virtual worlds. "The Making of Second Life" would benefit from closer reliance on empirical social science statistics and surveys---rather than largely anecdotal observations---for drawing conclusions about behavior in virtual world. However, despite this aside, Au's work is rife with rich, colorful accounts of the larger-than-life personalities and events in Second Life. It is an invaluable primer for anyone interested in Second Life history from an author who has been there since its inception.