Second Life

Second life is an internet based virtual world. It was launched in 2003 and developed by Linden Research inc, also known as the Linden Lab, came to international attention via the mainstream news in the late 2006/early 2007 .

Second life is a downloadable client program that allows the viewer to enable a "resident", to interact with each other through motional avatars ( a computerised image of a person) this creates an advanced level of a social network service which is combined with general aspect of a metaverse ( a virtual reality)

In this virtual world "residents" can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.

Second life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by cyberpunk literacy movement, and paticularly by Neal Stepthenson's novel Snow Crash. The goal of the Linden Lab was to create a metaverse as descirbed by Stepthensons, a user-defined world in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate where in real life they may not be able to.

The game is so in depth it even has its own currecny (the Linden dollar) which is exchangeable for real life currecny. Certain parts of the second life cannot be interacted with unless your credit card is given to the company and a small fee is paid every so often for new software etc etc.

Sometimes second life is refered to as a game, this description does not fit the standard definition. It does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. There are, however, several games within second life such as international football matches.

There are currently 20million accounts even though some are inactive and many residents have mutiple accounts. There are also no reliable figures for actual long term consistent usage. Second life has many competitors arising.

Second life shows amazing life like detail in its content from architecture to religion, the possibilites on this program are endless the realness of this system is so vast you can even go to school online and buy and purchase real and virtual items.

There is also a First life created for the younger generations as second life contains adult content this increased their audience by massive amounts as much more users were accessing their software.

Second life is very useful and opens up a new type of world to people with disabilites/disabled

where they are normal in the game and are accepted among people where they may not be/feel in real life. This program gives people a new life in certain respects and has helped so many people regain their confidence as they are normal. The program allows the 'resident'to design an avatar around what they want to look like or would dream to look like, this would also help to boost confidence but could exacerebate the situation as people may prefer their virtual life over their real life.

New media technology terminology

Convergence: Also know as technological convergence, is a trend where some technologies have distinct functionalities that evolve to technologies that overlap each other. This means multiple technologies or products come together to create one product with the best advantages of the orginial components.

Digital: This is the way in which data of all types is stored using binaray code, using 0's and 1's.
This can store a huge amount of data in a small amount of space maximising the capcity of the technology.

Synergy: This is the way a media institution tries to use its various products to sell one another, so one item will sell another and example of this is a mobile phone and a car charger for it.

Interactivity: This is where the audience/consumer can participate with the media products through the technology, and example of this is sky+ the red button where you can join in with TV shows, this creates UGC - user generated content.

Portability: This is technology that can be carried around with ease, i-pods and phones have taken this into account as they are now pocket size.

Connectivity: The ability for the technology to access the internet. Personal computers, laptops and mobile phones are a good example of this.

Miniaturisation: This is the process of technology getting smaller with the potenial of storing more information and increasing portability. i-pods are currently getting smaller in size yet the amount they can store is increasing.

Compatibility: Technology that allows connection to other devices to share information, i.e bluetooth and infra-red technologies where they can send information from one device to another.

Analogue: the old way in which media products have been distributed, i.e celluloid film and the original TVs

Storage: The capacity of a device to hold and retain data, the capacity is measured in bytes, KB, MB, GB and TB