Get a Second Life at the Library and Read Books Too
Edward Hirst
August 19, 2007

"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. Right now he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachno-fiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. So begins the book Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a cyber punk novel written in 1992.

The user-defined "metaverse" the Snow Crash described was the inspiration for Second Life, created in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, the founder of Linden Labs in San Francisco, the company that runs Second Life. This virtual world went live in 2003 with just under 1.000 registered users and today almost 9,000,000 accounts have been created. Around 1,000,000 accounts are active and at any given time approximately 30,000 to 45,000 avatars are actually “in world”.

What is Second Life? It’s a 3-D world created and owned entirely by the inhabitants who live there. It's not really a game in the sense that there are no goals to attain or dragons to slay. The primary focus is socialization and Linden Labs only provides the platform that the inhabitants or "avatars" use to interact with one another. Second Life has it's own economy that is based on Linden dollars. It even has its own time zone! It's a virtual world that contains the same places that you would find in real life. There are malls, villages, parks, neighborhoods, and even libraries to explore. You can attend events such as movies, concerts, author talks and dances. To paraphrase Laurie Anderson, who had paradise in mind when she said it, "Second Life is exactly like where you are now, only much, much better." Linden dollars can be exchanged for US dollars and they currently trade at 265 LDN to 1 USD. Anyone age 18 and over, (Teens 13 - 17 have their own area called Teen Second Life), can create a free account to begin exploring in Second Life. A premium account is currently $9.95 a month, which entitles the user to own virtual land and receive a weekly stipend of 300 Linden dollars a week.

Besides reading Snow Crash you can also check out a couple of different books that will help you get started having a Second Life. Rowan Public Library has A Beginner’s Unofficial Guide to Second Life, which is full of great tips for the beginner. Did you know that residents own the intellectual property rights to anything they create in Second Life? It’s possible to sell your creations there and exchange your LDN for USD. We also have Second Life: The Official Guide in our collection. It lists numerous places you can visit such as the International Spaceflight Museum or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s island where you can experience weather related exhibits such as hurricanes and tsunamis. Second Life is a huge world with lots of places to visit and did I mention you can fly?