I may not look good to you now, but you should see my avatar

I recently went on Second Life for the first time. Second Life I have found is a strange mix of both the old and the new. At first glimpse, it is both confusing and awe inspiring. The technology that allows the Second Lifers to create these fantasy worlds is impressive to say the least and that is to say nothing of the potential that this technology holds for the future. As for the present however, once the newness and sense of awe wears off, the visitor to these worlds quickly finds him or herself quickly descending into the worst and most banal that the internet has to offer.

To be fair, I am sure that there are filters to tailor ones visit to Second Life, but during my limited time with SL, my impression was that the vast majority of users were either looking for, offering, talking about, selling, buying, displaying, fantasizing about, preparing for, and often times, engaging in... a virtual version of sex. What occurred to me most profoundly was that if these users spent ten percent of the time that they have invested in SL actually interacting with real live people (without the internet, outside the home, face to face, etc.) most of them might actually find another person with which they could engage in whatever sort of intimate relationship that seems best to them. I guess this is my way of saying that as extraordinary as SL is, it must have taken unimaginable levels of effort on the part of its users to make it as impressive as it has become.

The technology that has gone into SL is amazing however. One can only imagine what the future holds for this platform. It is certainly easy to see some sort of conflation between SL and the various social networking and micro-blogging sites such as Facebook, and Twitter. If the technology ever progresses to the level where it is possible to photo and video-realistically recreate people and scenes from real life on SL, then this would certainly eclipse all of these other platforms. In this context, it is easy to imagine a coming together of real and second lives in a way that is both tantalizing and terrifying.