Customer Reviews

The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World

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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.

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.

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.

Not only is this book a good introduction to and history of Second Life, the popular 3-D online community and "virtual world," it's a solid cultural anthropology. Au's outlining of themes such as bebop reality, mirrored flourishing, and impression society are thoughtful, as well as thought provoking. This book has changed how I think about the virtual world, which has had more impact on the world and people's lives than I realized. Now I just need to spend more time there.

Even as a passive SL'er, this was a very enjoyable read!!!

One great difference from the million other SL books/articles/blogs out there is the great insight Au provides in to the origin's and evolution of the SL universe as we now know it. A fun and fascinating look back at the BIG BANG if you will.

I too will be taking a deeper look at SL!!!(Sorry Honey,kids)

Au's book is inspiring! Admittedly, I have always been curious, yet skeptical about Second Life. I have never taken the time to really explore the virtual world -sure, I have logged in a few times, but I have never really "lived" in SL. After getting a glimpse behind the scenes at SL, I am completely in awe of what can be accomplished in SL. I am left with more questions than answers...and as Martha would say, that is a good thing! My avatar is now ready to explore SL for the second time - I now have ideas about places I want to visit and businesses I would like to create!

I have been a resident of Second Life for about nine months and I enjoyed reading about its history and provenance and Mister Au does a fine job of recounting it. But Second Life, like the Web in general, is changing all the time. What may have been accurate a year ago is not very accurate today. It has become a varied, sophisticated, living community. I suppose that it is unreasonable to expect up-to-the-minute accuracy in book of this type. After all from inception to publication, there is a lengthy lag in book production. But, all in all, this is a competent introduction to Second Life. Read the book, join the community.

In 2001, two years into its life, the staff of Linden Lab sat huddled around in a circle and asked themselves one question: "What is this company about?" It sounds like something you would want decided well in advance, but this hazy openendedness seems to typify the spirit behind the strange phenomenon of Second Life.

Fortunately, for the uninitiated, and the mildly interested (like me), there is a book that tells you all you need to know. I was surprised at myself for liking it, but it gives an interesting insight into the process of building a successful dotcom. Deep and meaningful it isn't, but it does more than just portray events in Second Life, and landmarks on the way to making it the world's biggest (?) online community. It begins with the story of the startup, the connections and friendships, the doubts, the constraints, and the skeptics, before giving a topic-by-topic coverage of the metaverse itself. Even in the early chapters, there is a certain lack of pure narrative, so even though Au has seen inside the offices of Linden Lab, he tells relatively little of the story of the business, which might have made the book more interesting. Nevertheless, we do gain some insight into the mind of Philip Rosedale, the visionary entrepreneur behind Second Life, although I'm sure there are better business biographies on the market.

When Au covers the stories within Second Life, there are the usual ones about those who have made real money from the metaverse, and the rather extraordinary, including one about an in-world private investigator who gets paid to catch cheating husbands within the virtual world. I kid you not, real world wives (well, a few at any rate) are paying a virtual private investigator to check on real husbands having virtual affairs with something that just happens to look like Lara Croft. On the scale of infidelity, I gather this rates somewhat higher than porn, but I trust a lot less than a real-life affair. With the female concern about emotional infidelity, it's not hard to sympathise. Even so, when Au describes what Second Life sex is really about (a bit of cartoon shenanigans, some right clicking and some keyboard action, presumably one-handed) it's hard to imagine what all the fuss is about. Anyone doing this to get away from his real world life must be a pretty sad case anyway.

I think what makes the book mostly worthwhile is the author's ability to bring a bizarre community back into the realm of the human. Here we meet a disabled person who has made it as a music entrepreneur, a victim of crime who fears to tread outside who has reinvented herself in the fashion business, and a blonde, tanned, white girl (well, avatar) who wears black skin for a change - and falls victim to the scourge of racism. If your sense of humanity is dented by that last one, there is also a discussion of a display to teach people about schizophrenia, and even a brief mention of a UN poverty awareness campaign, all using the technology of Second Life to create interactive displays.

There is also the inevitable. Au charts the rise and pathetic decline of real world corporations that invested heavily in a Second Life presence, not having the faintest clue what the online world was really about. They all thought they could put up huge displays, not realising that Second Life was about content creation and interactivity, rather than virtual world copies of fancy ideas from reality. Flying is possible in Second Life, but hardly anyone does it. If it were the real world, and you could fly, would you waste a moment?

On the down side, the book is only averagely-well written, complete with gobbledigook phrases like "Mirrored Flourishing", which I'm not going to describe. Those who want a better narrative with a more convincing, energetic writing style might prefer Peter Ludlow's "The Second Life Herald", but this one has a lot more humanity to it. I spent a total of 4 hours "playing" Second Life, and a comparable amount of time reading this book (I'm a slow reader). The book was better.

Very good book. There were a lot of fascinating historical anecdotes. Particularly interesting was the account of the cyber war used to enforce political correctness. The book did have one weak point. It did not give a satisfactory explanation or useful references for a world map of the entire Second Life grid.

The item was new as described. Relatively slow delivery, but product is in perfect condition. Recommended seller.