Virtual Worlds

To date, I haven’t been bitten by the Second Life bug. My avatar is very neglected. In a recent trip with my teenage daughter, I had to chuckle at her reaction to internet access. When I lack email access for several hours, I develop a psychological condition known as connectitus, defined as: “some part of the world has changed in the last five minutes, and I must find out RIGHT NOW what it was”. My daughter has a different view: she wants to know what happened in her virtual world…most recently, that her horses needed to be fed (don’t think it’s a function of age, but of interests). She laughs at me when I need my information fix, I laugh at her when her digital horses require food. It’s the same digital disorder, it just manifests itself differently! Techcrcunch has a short article summarizing different virtual world services (just to inform the world that even though Second Life is the de facto conference theme these days, many more options exist).
Freakonomics blog has a discussion on the value of Second Life.