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Copyright 2007 The Wichita Eagle

All Rights Reserved

The Wichita Eagle (Kansas)

March 4, 2007 Sunday

SECTION: BRIEFS; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1506 words

HEADLINE: Living a Second Life;

For some the virtual community is pure entertainment. For others, it's the Web's
second coming.

BYLINE: JILLIAN COHAN, The Wichita Eagle

BODY:

It's late afternoon on a typical weeknight, and Bill Gilliland is flying. He

lands outside a casino, takes a quick look inside and decides it's not the scene
for him. Soon after, he teleports to a nightclub and starts grooving to house
and techno music.

The playlist is one he rarely finds in Wichita, he says. But with a

high-speed connection and some patience, Gilliland can hit the dance floor
whenever he'd like in Second Life, a free virtual-reality world that some call a
game and others tout as the next wave in Internet communication.

It's a rapidly growing online community and Kansans are already among its 4
million registered users. They're discovering Second Life's potential for
entertainment, education and entrepreneurship.

"It's like The Sims, but to a much higher level," Gilliand says, referring to
the popular video game.

But, as he quickly points out, Second Life isn't a G-rated experience. Where
the Sims might blur out characters' naughty bits, some Second Lifers have no
problem with full frontal. Stay out of areas marked "mature," Gilliland warns,
or you could be exposed to risque content. As a safeguard, children aren't
allowed into Second Life. A cleaner youth version of the game is open to users
ages 13-17.

Flying is de rigeur in Second Life, as is teleporting. As Gilliland

demonstrates with his onscreen character (called an avatar), all you need to fly
are a few keystrokes. To teleport, just select a new location on the Second Life
map and you'll be zapped to it.
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Living a Second Life; For some the virtual community is pure entertainment. For
others, it's the Web's second coming. The Wichita Eagle (Kansas) March 4, 2007
Sunday

Well, almost. Gilliland, a 27-year-old flight-simulator technician, laughs

when he tries to teleport to a "sandbox" -- an area designated for creative play
-- so he can drive a four-wheeler. He ends up underneath the sandbox, in what
looks like quicksand.

Like any emerging community, there are still some bugs in Second Life.
Although the virtual world launched several years ago, it wasn't until recently
that the average user had the computing capacity to load and view its
high-powered graphics. Even a tech geek like Gilliland, who has seven computer
systems in his house, still gets bounced offline if the user loads are too
heavy.

A virtual marketplace

When Second Life founder Philip Rosedale started building the virtual world,
he imagined it as a user-created environment with no boundaries. Just like in
the real world, Second Life has its own real-estate market and its own currency,
the Linden Dollar, which has a U.S. dollar exchange rate. When you earn Lindens
in Second Life, they can be converted into U.S. dollars via a PayPal account.

Rosedale's company, Linden Lab, manages Second Life, but anything users
create for themselves is theirs to sell, trade or give away. Some Second Lifers
have become virtual entrepreneurs, hawking land, buildings or gadgets they've
built and bringing in a substantial income.

Not everyone can become a Linden Dollar millionaire, though. In order to

build objects in Second Life, it helps to know Photoshop, 3-D modeling and
computer programming, particularly Linden Script Language. But if you're
interested in learning how, many Second Lifers will teach you "in-world." (For
an online scripting tutorial, visit the Kansas Board of Regents' Second Life Web
site: www.kan-ed.org/second-life.)

Second Life's virtual marketplace has garnered a lot of media attention and
has led tech companies like IBM and Cisco to build headquarters in-world.
Gilliland says he was first attracted to the game when he read about a woman who
made a fortune selling real estate.

The real attraction, however, and the reason pundits have tagged Second Life
as the next wave in online communication, is that the virtual world more closely
mimics human interaction than Web sites do.

At the moment, if you visit a popular site like Amazon.com, you have no idea
how many other people are on the site at the same time. You can't ask them
questions or seek advice. In Second Life, it's possible to do that, and more.
Imagine shopping online using an avatar with your exact dimensions. You could
browse through a virtual mall and try on clothes just as you would in the real
world. It might not be possible today, but it will be soon.

It's a lab, too

After Gilliland gets bored at the disco, he embarks on a quest to find other
Kansans. Before long he's at the Kansas State Library's virtual home, chatting
with a librarian whose Second Life name is "Rocky Vallejo."

"I'm sorry you missed our Kansas Day exhibit," the librarian says via instant
message. "(We) had huge photos with a lot of in-world info on Kansas."
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Living a Second Life; For some the virtual community is pure entertainment. For
others, it's the Web's second coming. The Wichita Eagle (Kansas) March 4, 2007
Sunday

In real life, Vallejo's name is Bill Sowers and he specializes in state

documents at the Kansas library in Topeka. In-world, he's part of an initiative
to broaden the knowledge base of Second Life. Twice a week, he volunteers at the
reference desk on Info Island, an information bank staffed by librarians from
around the world.

"We consider this a 'laboratory' for looking into ways that libraries can
work in a virtual setting," he tells Gilliland.

As he gives his guest a tour of the Kansas Library, Sowers/Vallejo mentions a

Kansan he met while working on the Kansas Day exhibit. His in-world name is John
Galland, and he's a professor at Fort Hays State University.

Galland, a.k.a. assistant professor of geology John Heinrichs, is one of

several Fort Hays employees who are mining Second Life's potential as a teaching
tool.

"The media hype has been, unfortunately, in the wrong places," he says. "They
focus on the money aspect, which I think is really barking up the wrong tree....
What's really going on is the first tremor of something that's going to change
the way we communicate."

Will it be a university?

Over the years, Heinrichs says, he's noticed that traditional classroom
settings don't engage today's students as they have in the past.

"They're used to continuous social-networking environments," he says."...We

need to develop methods to reach these students that play to their strengths
instead of just replicating ours."

To that end, Fort Hays State plans to build a virtual university within
Second Life, complete with replicas of buildings from the real-life campus.
Heinrichs and his colleagues imagine a place where pre-law students hold mock
trials, distance-learning students choose their classes at a virtual registrar's
office and astronomy classes gaze at the heavens in a virtual planetarium.

The in-world college may take several years to build, Heinrichs says, but
he's already taught in a virtual classroom and he plans to take students on
virtual field trips.

As exciting as he finds Second Life as a teaching tool, Heinrichs says he's

even more fascinated with it personally.

Since he first joined Second Life, he's furnished a cabin for himself,
created a sailboat and set up a small store to sell the satellite photos he
takes.

His brother lives in Wisconsin,but Heinrichs often meets up with his avatar
in-world. They have the sorts of adventures they used to as kids -- playing
soldiers, jousting and exploring.

"I've spent more time with my brother and stepson in the last 10 months than
I have in years," he says.

There's something about the 3-D interface that tricks our brains into a
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Living a Second Life; For some the virtual community is pure entertainment. For
others, it's the Web's second coming. The Wichita Eagle (Kansas) March 4, 2007
Sunday

suspension of disbelief, allowing us to become personally invested in the

virtual world, Heinrichs says.

"It's very serendipitous. You always seem to stumble into the right person at
the right time."

Heinrichs adds that he doesn't go in-world when he's at work -- he's focused
on his real-world students and their real-world concerns. It takes some effort
to stay away, he says. But when he gets home tonight, he plans to take his
sailboat for a whirl in a virtual ocean.

DEFINE THAT

SECOND LIFE

Avatar -- A character that represents you in Second Life. Avatars can be men,
women or furries (a combination of human and animal features). Avatars are
highly customizable. Some look like superheroes or elves, while others are
average Joes.

Grid -- The Second Life continent and its archipelagos.

In-world -- To take place inside Second Life.

Island -- A unit of land that rings the Second Life continent. Islands cost
about $1,700 for six virtual acres. It's not necessary to own land to
participate in Second Life.

Linden Dollar -- The official currency of Second Life, Lindens can be

exchanged for U.S. dollars on LindeX, the in-world currency exchange
marketplace.

Prims -- The building blocks for creating objects in Second Life. They're
flexible and relatively easy to manipulate, allowing users to create whatever
they want in-world.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

SECOND LIFE

To join Second Life, you'll need a cable or DSL line, a fairly new computer
and a good graphics card. It will run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP machines and
Macs with OS X 10.3.9 or higher.

For a full description of the system requirements, visit

http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php.

More than flying or teleporting, it is this simple pastime -- one he couldn't

undertake in landlocked Kansas -- that brings him joy. Sometimes, he says, we
all could use a Second Life.Reach Jillian Cohan at 316-268-6524 or
jcohan@wichitaeagle.com.

LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2007