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Watching the web

Though slothful and ignorant in many things the wit and ingenuity of mankind when it comes to trying to build a world detached from the Creator is remarkable.

So whereas scientists play games with created life and engineers dream of artificial life, the online world now has http://www.SecondLife.com.

SecondLife (SL) is a virtual, 3-D universe in which residents (almost two million of them) interact in real time to build a world of their own imagination.

It is the ultimate video-game, a 3-D chatroom with pretty scenery to end all other chatrooms. But if the hype is to be believed it may also herald the next generation of the internet.

Where the web is going?

SecondLifers exist as characters, called avatars, that they have designed to represent themselves virtually. The world they inhabit has its own currency, Linden dollars, and, because SecondLifers own everything that they create, there is a burgeoning economy worth tens of millions of real US dollars. A growing number of people are making a very serious living from SL.

SL is seen by many industry watchers as a model of where the web is going. A musician might decide to give a concert in SL, or a celebrity an interview. A teacher separated from his/her students could assemble the class online, perhaps in a grand castle on top of an awesome mountain, created especially for the occasion.

An online shop such as Amazon.com currently exists in 2-D as a line of pictures on the screen but in SL the shop would be rows of aisles through which you could push a trolley picking up products and asking for help from avatar staff.

But as graphics become more and more life-like and more of our daily life goes online, places like SL also serve to blur the lines between fantasy and reality.

Because in SL there is no God. There are no consequences to sin. There is no decay. SecondLifers exist entirely as images defined by their creator, free of ugliness or unwanted inhibitions.

Are there are any churches in SL? Perhaps they would be deemed offensive. Linden Labs, the designers of SL, reserve the right to ban any residents that they choose to. It seems that even in virtual ‘paradises’ there have to be rules, and a ruler to ensure that everything continues to work.

Stephen J. Doggett