Brave News World a magazine with a point of view Spring 2008

What is Second Life? Second Life (SL) is an Internet virtual world brought to life online in 2003 by Linden Research, Inc. (a.k.a. Linden Lab), a San Francisco company. Second Life was inspired mainly by the cyberpunk literary movement, notably Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. Linden Lab's goal has been to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world of general use in which people interact, do business, learn, play, and otherwise communicate. A downloadable Second Life Viewer enables residents to interact with each other through avatars, providing an extraordinarily advanced level of social networking combined with general aspects of a metaverse. More than 13 million accounts have been registered to date and membership is growing at nearly one million per month. Residents explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, undertake manufacturing and commercial wholesale and retail activities, create and trade their virtual property and services. Second Life is not a game. It does not have rules, points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. It is a semi-structured virtual environment where characters undertake activities for the purpose of personal empowerment and enjoyment. Membership is free with one advanced level called premium. Second Life's virtual currency is the Linden dollar (L$). It is exchangeable for US dollars in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab and real life companies. The current exchange rate is around US$4 = L$1000. Brave News World cover      About the editors      Images      Videos      Wiki      Blog Second Life official website      Computer requirements      Register for Second Life      Download the viewer

Brave News World magazine is produced for the Web by students in the course Online Journalism JRN 4100 led by Professor Anthony Curtis, Department of Mass Communications, University of North Carolina at Pembroke. The issue theme, cover, sections and pages were designed by students in the course and article topics were chosen and reported by the individual students who wrote them. The students hold the copyright for their individual creations of articles and images. The name Second Life and the hand logo and logotype are registered trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. (a.k.a. Linden Lab). We are grateful to those agencies and institutions that have graciously provided other images for this edition. Views expressed by individual writers in this magazine are not endorsed by the professor, the department, the university, or possibly anyone else. Your comments are welcomed by the professor who may be contacted via e-mail at acurtis@uncp.edu or by phone at (910) 521-6616.