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Second Life is a virtual world where users can create their own environments and avatars, interact with others, attend events, trade using Linden Dollars, and even attend university lectures. It has attracted media attention and controversy due to its blurring of real life and virtual reality, as well as incidents of illegal activity.
Second Life is a virtual world designed by Linden Research, Inc and opened to the public in 2003. Second Life users, known as “residents,” can interact with each other within the virtual world’s expansive framework. This framework is colloquially known as “the grid”. Although Second Life attracted little public attention when it was first released, in 2006 and 2007 it began to attract media attention, causing sign-ups to skyrocket.
Several things about Second Life make it quite distinctive. The first is that users can shape their own environments. The residents are represented by avatars, figures that can be humanoid or completely imaginative, depending on personal taste, and the residents can program their own avatars according to their needs. People can also create environments, from islands to deserts, and build houses, gardens, set up shops, and participate in a wide variety of activities that make Second Life incredibly diverse.
Residents can move through this virtual reality in a variety of ways, from walking with their avatars, flying short distances, or teleporting to specific locations. As people browse Second Life, they can interact with each other, start conversations, or send instant messages long distances. In this sense, Second Life is almost like a form of social networking and people can participate in various activities and events together.
Activities in Second Life are quite varied. Some groups of residents have created games ranging from traditional-style role-playing games to complex logic puzzles. Residents can also enjoy art exhibits, musical performances and theater productions in the Second Life universe. This aspect of Second Life has attracted a lot of attention, as numerous politicians, organizations, educational institutions, businesses, and even government agencies have a presence in Second Life.
Second Life users can attend political rallies with real politicians, visit foreign embassies to get information about visiting various countries, and even talk to job recruiters. They also engage in trade with each other, using a currency known as the Linden Dollar. Some people make their living in Second Life by selling in-game goods and selling the Linden Dollars they earn to other users to convert them into cash.
A basic membership to Second Life is free, and the company also offers a tiered membership system that allows people to buy land so they can make their mark in the game. Depending on the desired plot size, people can pay relatively low or extremely high fees for things like private islands. All of these textures are shaped by their users, and people have created everything from self-enclosed ecosystems that run on their own to imaginative worlds with mythical animals using their Second Life accounts.
The world of Second Life has attracted media attention because it blurs the lines between real life and virtual reality in many ways. For example, some users fear taxation based on Second Life earnings, which can be turned into real money. Second Life has also been used to organize protests against organizations and governments, and people can do things like attend university lectures within the grid, thanks to innovative programs sponsored by some universities. Second Life has also seen more sinister activity, such as the trading of child pornography, ponzi schemes that exploit residents, and denial-of-service attacks designed to harm individual residents.
