If you’ve been exposed to any of the recent media hype surrounding Second Life, you may have concluded that Linden Lab’s virtual world is an unstoppable force.
Second Life signups have accelerated to nearly half-million per month. Linden founder Philip Rosedale seems to be everywhere at once (although that may just be his Avatar). And SL-celebrity Anshe Chung has become a household name (at least for readers of Business Week).
With so much momentum and positive press, what could possibly go wrong?
Oh, I don’t know, maybe something like a Federal investigation into online gambling in virtual casinos.
Of all of the vices in the Metaverse, some translate better than others. Virtual drugs don’t work particularly well — unless you count Second Life itself as a drug. Virtual prostitution, as creepy as it seems, apparently works for a few people who can get past the possibility that their virtual playmate might actually be a grizzled construction worker in Peoria.
Virtual gambling, on the other hand, is a perfect match for this virtual world.
Online gambling is a well-established industry, and for many, the added social element of a virtual reality world is a significant improvement over watching 2-D cards dealt onto a flat green poker table.
[Read more…] about Second Life Vice: Linden Lab Is in Denial About Its Gambling Problem
The first thing you notice is the boxes. The huge, huge boxes, piled high on top of each other from the floor to the airplane-hangar sized ceiling.
I’m wrong. A lot.
According to the “Anshe Chung is a millionaire and you aren’t” 
To say that I spend every waking moment online would be inaccurate. Sure, I’m online whether at work or at home, with the same screen configuration at both: Gmail window in the upper left corner of the screen, minimized but visible enough to see if there’s a new email or chat request, SecureCRT in the bottom left, just enough showing to see if there’s a new message. That’s also how my laptop looks when I’m at a wifi cafe writing, which is how I spend most of my quote-free-unquote time these days. But it isn’t just the waking moments, because even when I’m asleep, I’m still downloading stuff. Someone was kind enough to post the 
We at Medialoper take pride in surfing the hemorrhaging edge of cultural analysis, so I’ll be blunt: sex sells.