Second Lives

By: Tim Guest

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Paperback | 2 June 2008 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
368 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 13.1 x 2.3

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Second Lives explores the culture of virtual lives - and those that inhabit them - the romantics, the traders, the dreamers, those who fantasise about world domination, the disabled, the military and the police.

We've always dreamed of perfect places- Eden, heaven, Oz - places over the rainbow, beyond death and loss.

Now, through computer technology, we can inhabit those worlds together. Each week, between 35 and 50 million people worldwide abandon reality for virtual worlds. In Boston, Massachusetts, a group of nine disabled men and women inhabit one virtual body, which frees them from their lifelong struggle to be seen and heard. The Pentagon has begun to develop virtual worlds to help in real-world battles. In Korea, where one particular game has 8 million residents, virtual violence has spread into the real world. Fortunes have been made, and mafia gangs have emerged to muscle in on the profits.

In these new computer-generated places, which at first glance seem free from trouble and sorrow, you can create a new self. With the click of a mouse you can select eye colour, face shape, height, even wings. You can build houses, make and sell works of art, earn real money, get married and divorced. On websites like eBay, people sell virtual clothes and rent virtual property for real cash - for a total of e400 million worth each year.

Tim Guest takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic looking-glass, as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of the 21st century.

Industry Reviews

Excellent journalistic study of virtual realities...and a useful account of how these technologies are evolving from mere games to parts of a lifestyle * Times Literary Supplement *
Inspiring, troubling and consistently thought-provoking -- Hot Books * Observer *
Guest must be commended for investigating this topic. It is an area of digital culture ripe for further serious study as we continue to emerge from postmodernity into an era perhaps better described as the metamodern * Observer *

Remarkably timely...an enthusiastic guide, who explains often complex ideas with a minimum of jargon, and tells some great stories

* Sunday Telegraph *
Guest maintains a sober head amid much Aquarian moonshine, and keeps his interviewees sympathetic, a fine achievement in a universe of geeks, fraudsters, and oddballs. * Daily Telegraph *

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