I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders)

I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders) | Mark Stephen Meadows | A FASCINATING READ!

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I, Avatar: The Cul...

	I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life (New Riders) Mark Stephen Meadows New Riders Press, 2008 - 144 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What is an avatar? Why are there nearly a billion of them, and who is using them? Do avatars impact our real lives, or are they just video game conceits? Is an avatar an inspired rendering of its creator?s inner self, or is it just one among millions of anonymous vehicles clogging the online freeways? Can we use our avatars to really connect with people, or do they just isolate us? And as we become more like our avatars do they become more like us?

In I, Avatar, Mark Stephen Meadows answers some of these questions, but more importantly, he raises hundreds of others in his exploration of avatars and the fascinating possibilities they hold. His examination of avatars through the lenses of sociology, psychology, politics, history, and art, he will change the way you look at even a simple online profile and revolutionize the idea of avatars as part of our lives, whether first or second.

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Compelling content in a lovely package

I agree with all of the comments already made about this book. Anyone who follows virtual worlds has seen far too many superficial, sensationalized, and often factually incorrect media reports about who goes on in them. This book is the complete opposite of that. It's a deep and thoughtful discussion of how they can affect people for better and for worse. It gets beneath the caricatures to examine the whole concept of identity in physical spaces, virtual spaces, and the gray area between the two.

Anyone who has spent time in virtual worlds will be able to relate to much of what is said from their own experiences and observations, and those who have not spent time in virtual worlds would benefit from reading this book before dismissing them.

The content alone would make the book well worth reading, but as others have already mentioned, it's also beautifully presented. In fact, the book itself is analogous to the phenomena it describes: an attractive setting with a lot of interesting things happening inside.

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A FASCINATING READ!

I started reading about virtual worlds after having been in Second Life for six monthes. "I, Avatar" is a great read, with wonderful photos of the avatars from Second Life. I've read other books in a similar vein, but without good photos, you really can't understand the appeal of virtual worlds. I also learned things which were very helpful. Read the chapter entitled "Fur vs. Gor." When I met my first slaves and their master in a Gorean community, I at least had a clue of what was going on, having just read about Gorean rituals. Virtual worlds are here to stay, and many say they are where our future is going. Check this book out!

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Enjoyable to the last page

I found this book to be enjoyable to the last page. The author takes you on a journey with him into another world. His comments about the culture and his reflections on his avatar bring you back to reality only for a moment before you continue on with him on his journey. The pictures in this book are really beautiful and contains a lot of details so readers do not have to imagine what the author is talking about.

Rambling look at Second Life

This is a memoir of a lot of time the author spent in role-playing sites, especially Second Life, interspersed with meditations on the meaning of these activities and of avatars in particular. This is not a how-to book and won't teach you how to do anything in Second Life, but it gives you a good idea of what the Second Life experience is.

Avatar is a Sanskrit word and in Hindu philosophy refers to an incarnation of a divine being. The term was adopted by a number of computer gaming systems to mean a character in the game, and was popularized by Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) where it means a computer simulation of a human form. Stephenson's novel appears to have been a major influence on the structure of Second Life.

Second Life has its own monetary system, the Linden Dollar, which can be converted to and from real-world currencies in an exchange operated by Linden Labs, the Second Life creator. The author is primarily an artist, and he found himself being drawn strongly into Second Life where he created artistic objects. He sold these for Linden Dollars, but his primary motivation seemed to be the fascination of creating things in a new medium and a new culture. As he spent more time there, Second Life gradually came to seem more real than real life.

There are numerous subcultures in Second Life, such as the Goreans (admirers of John Norman's Gor novels such as Tarnsman of Gor), who act out dominance fantasies, and Furry Nation, whose avatars are humanoid with animal heads. Each subculture has its own location in Second Life and its own rituals.

The book's style is impressionistic, but it frequently cites statistics without giving sources. It's often difficult to know how seriously to take them. For example, on p. 36 we read an unsourced statement that "Over 75 percent of Internet users feel safer speaking their mind when they use an avatar." Is this plausible? It implies that over 75 percent of Internet users use avatars, which is hard to believe. Maybe it means that of those who use avatars, 75% feel safer. It would be nice to know the source of this data. On p. 67 we read that "approximately one million companies ... rely on the Internet for over 50 percent of their revenues." This one is plausible: there are many tiny companies that get all their business from the Internet, just as there used to be many tiny companies that got all their business from mail order. How would you measure this, and who did measure it?

The book is most interesting as a study of the subcultures that have sprung up in Second Life. It also has striking artwork of the avatars themselves. But the discussion is very diffuse and wandering and it's hard to draw any firm conclusions about avatars or anything else.

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Good content-mediocre display

I like the way he describes and explains the avatar experience from a non-academic or overly technical perspective. Only 37 pages in and I've noticed at least 3 serious typos. Forgiving I am in the digital realm but if you're going to make me pay for print, it be nice if all the sentences made sense.

reviews: page 1, 2

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