Things are starting to heat up concerning media covreage of SL. Latest to join the fray is The Economist, with both online and print versions of their story. For once, an article about SL that doesn't mention sex at all! The piece is filled instead with an examination of (what else?) the economy of SL, sprinkled liberally with quotes from various 'Net noteworthies such as Jaron Lanier, Virtual Reality pioneer; and Edward Castronova, Indiana University professor and author of "Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games".
This article is also noteworthy to me in that it's the first such piece that defines the term metaverse (which the Economist has as 'metaphysical universe'), and makes the attempt to provide a pronunciation of MMORPGs (apparently it's pronounced 'morpegs', which I've never heard before). Well done and cautiously optimistic, this is worthwhile reading.
1. Oh, they wrote about it before. I once noted it in this blog entry:
http://taotakashi.wordpress.com/2006/04/23/just-one-day-in-my-second-life/#more-17
It was in a special about all sorts of new media stuff like blogs, podcasts and so on and how it affects old media organisations and how they try to deal with it. SL had some box where it was explained what it was.
And as I am just back from vacation and 3 issues of The Economist are waiting for me I will pick that one now to read how they followup on that :)
Posted at 6:02PM on Oct 1st 2006 by Tao Takashi