Your Life in Virtual Reality, Welcome to Second Life

A few months ago, I watched a television show on MTV about a girl that was a solo guitar performer that was involved in an Internet based program called "Second Life." As soon as the program was over, I searched the web and found all kinds of information about the program, commonly mistakenly called a "game," of which it is very much not.

Linden Labs, a technology based stage name for some other major developer is based out of California and is the creators of this massive virtual world. This place could never be called a game, simply because there is no game to it. This virtual world is made of many islands that are stated to be 65,536sqm (about 16 acres) in size. There is also a large connected area called the "Mainland" where you can buy a space at auction to setup where the main foot traffic is. Most of the fun and creativity however happens on the private islands.

For those that just want to get into Second Life to fly around and see people and places or make a friend or two, you can join the program for free. Just go to their website and register an avatar name and email address. After you download a small, starter program on your desktop, you are ready to jump into the world of Second Life!

Once you are in this world there are hundreds of dance clubs, social gatherings, and even real life businesses conducting real business on this virtual platform. I have recently discovered St. Leo University on Second Life and decided to apply to get my Master's Degree through them simple because they tell me that they use Second Life islands in some of the courses projects for business majors, how cool is that?

I have also found a lot of sex related spots that I am not personally interested in, but clearly is a big money maker inside this Second Life platform. Gambling in a touchy subject, there are some places that used to run full casinos here and people made a lot of money on it, however, the Feds have now banned Second Life from gambling and therefore most of these places have shut down. There are still some places to gamble out there, just not clearly labeled as being such a place.

I hope that you will give consideration to joining the 1.5 million members that are already on Second Life and if you are out there be sure to stop by Give Island and see Magistacalian Cyberschreiber while you're out there.