After hearing about Second Life for the first time this week I looked into this internet pseudo community, to truly gain a sense of what it entailed. I understood it as an online 'life' outside of the reality in our everyday lives. We can be who we want to be in regards to looks, lifestyle, career, etc. When I came acorss this video of Second Life, where people with accounts can be trained as firefighters, it really made me think. Do we find our satisfaction in life through the public sphere and abilities of the internet? Maybe when you were younger you always wanted to be a firefighter but your parents forced you into being a business student. Second Life not only gives you the ability to become a firefighter but see what training and hardwork it takes to be one. This notion of being able to create a second path for your life, is so beyond what I think anyone would have ever thought to achieve out of the internet. When we participate in such online programs as Second Life, we may be recreating a life that we hoped was ours. This social network is something that elminates all cultural boundaries of real life, and allows for the impossible to longer be impossible. We can eliminate the notion of boundaries that is so readily enforced in everyday life. Is this a positive use of the internet? Are there negative impacts to creating such an unrealistic life for oneself?
déjà vu
15 years ago