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When a virtual journalist for a virtual newspaper reporting on the digital world of an online game lands on the real-world front page of the New York Times, it just might signal the dawn of a new era. Virtual journalist Peter Ludlow was banned from The Sims Online for being a bit too good at his job - for reporting in his virtual tabloid the Alphaville Herald on the cyber-brothels, crimes, and strong-arm tactics that had become rife in the game - and when the Times, the BBC, CNN, and other media outlets covered the story, users all over the Internet called the banning censorship. Seeking a new virtual home, Ludlow moved the Herald to another virtual world - the powerful online environment of Second Life - just as it was about to explode onto the international mediascape and usher in the next iteration of the Internet. In The Second Life Herald, Ludlow and his colleague Mark Wallace take us behind the scenes of the Herald as they report on the emergence of a fascinating universe of virtual spaces that will become the next generation of the World Wide Web: a 3-D environment that provides richer, more expressive interactions than the Web we know today. In 1992, science fiction writer Neal Stephenson imagined the "Metaverse," a virtual space that we would enter via the Internet and in which we would conduct important parts of our daily lives. According to Ludlow and Wallace, that future is coming sooner than we think. They chronicle its chaotic, exhilarating, frightening birth, including the issue that the mainstream media often ignore: conflicts across the client-server divide over who should write the laws governing virtual worlds.… (more)
User reviews
Ludlow (the professor) teams up with real-life journalist Wallace to recount the emergent social dynamics and conflicts they witnessed within these virtual spaces—and between the worlds’ corporate overlords and inhabitants—and to investigate attendant legal questions—free speech, intellectual property, and other rights of the virtual citizenry. Their fascination with the subject is thoroughly contagious, excited storytelling voice escaping the page. (Indeed, this n00b recalls giggling aloud at their cheeky descriptions of online antics and reading many passages to my very patient housemate.)
Also compelling is their decision to tell their tale in the third person and to couch the narrative, tongue in cheek, in terms of a crime thriller, with the “assassination” of Urizenus, publisher of the Alphaville Herald, at the core.
The only detraction from my enjoyment of this tome was the unfortunate recurrence of egregious typos, totally unbefitting an outfit like The MIT Press. (If you’re short on proofreading talent there, fellas, I hasten to offer my services—cheap and very thorough.)
By my reckoning, the best moment comes when Ludlow, after a hundred pages of (quite amusingly) exploring the unsavory behavior of virtual mafiosi, scammers, and cyber-prostitutes, sits at the computer with his young daughter, discussing the demise of his avatar:
"Ludlow spent that New Year’s Eve with his seven-year-old daughter. In the morning they logged on to TSO with a borrowed account to see the old Herald headquarters, and talked about why Urizenus had been terminated (along with his pets). His daughter giggled at the thought that they were doing something naughty by going back into the game, and expressed her anger with EA for killing the cats Black and Cheddar Cheese Cheetah." (161)
If only more people would be such enlightened guides for their children!