No Sweaty Summer Jobs for Today’s Young Geeks and Gamers

The WSJ has a pretty neat look at the small (but growing) number of kids who have found ways to earn money in various MMO’s like Second Life and World of Warcraft:

“As the pool of traditional summer jobs shrinks, tech-savvy young gamers are honing their computer skills to capitalize on growing demand for virtual goods and services. Some work as fashion designers, architects and real-estate developers in Second Life, a fantasy world populated by digital representations of real people. These so-called avatars shop in malls, buy property, hang out with friends or sit “home” watching TV, all manipulated by their real-life counterparts with computer key strokes and a mouse.”

Although many in the adult world have seen little economic benefit to in-game businesses you might be surprised to learn that, “On a typical day, Second Life players spend close to $1.5 million on virtual clothes, jewelry, homes, cars and real estate.”  That’s real (ok US$) money.

It’ll be interesting to see how fast the most successful kids in this realm are bought out or co-opted by the major corporations that have failed to make a dent in the same marketplace.

Great Use of SecondLife – “Annonymous” Health Advice for Teens

PSFK has news on the first really smart use of SecondLife that I’ve heard about in a while:

“Spanish-speaking teens can virtually visit a health clinic anonymously on Second Life to ask doctors embarrassing questions that may be left unasked face-to-face. Incorporating instant messaging and video chatting, the clinic will allow teens to privately address pubescent-issues like STDs, dermatological and emotional issues.”

I’d love to see an English-speaking version of this.  I wonder if there are legal concerns about offering this kind of advice in this type of environment but I think anything that encourages kids to be informed about sex and health, especially when most schools seem to fail its students in this regard, is worth trying.

Do We Want To Go Virtual?

In sorta big gaming news, The Sims is becoming EA Land, an online virtual world ala SecondLife and There.com.

One of the main reasons I find myself emersed in new media today is due to my love of cyberpunk as a kid.  The idea of a full virtual reality that we could plug into was just completely enthralling to me at the time.

However, though I was a very early internet adopter and user I never got excited by things like SecondLife or There.com largely because they just seemed like toy – there is nothing that one needs to do in SL and most of the possible activities are pretty much things I do in my real life.  That’s all fine as a temporary escape but it doesn’t emerse one in  a useful alternative world.

It is still quicker and easier to navigate the 2D web via links and scrollbars than it is to wander a Virtual town looking for the “library.”

As a social alternative there is some real potential in these virtual worlds but the idea i had as a kid that we would be living part of our lives inside the machine seems silly to me now.

However, the notion of a “filter” that puts the web over the real world, like explored in Gibson’s last book, Spook Country, is potentially REALLY exciting.

Revisiting Snow Crash

I recently, um, acquired an audiobook reading of Neal Stephenson’s SNOW CRASH and have been listening to it during my commute.  I first read this book, well-known to be the philosophic foundation of SecondLife, in the mid-80’s, when the whole thing was pure fantasy.

Each chapter holds some amazing foresight by Neal.  Today, he introduced an object called Earth which is almost a complete imagination of what we all now know and love as GoogleEarth.

So cool.