Cyber Life

We all enjoy our little cyber circle. It enhances our lives and friendships. It keeps us connected when life busyness or distance keeps us apart. I sometimes joke that I have a better cyber life than I do a real life! Some people take their cyber lives very seriously.

These are people who have given up on pursuing much of a real life all together. Maybe they have discovered that they can be an entirely new and better person (or perceived as such) in cyber space. Maybe they have discovered that communication is so much easier and less of a personal risk online. Whatever the reason, almost 200,000 people world-wide have gotten a second life: A cyber life. You too can create a new (cyber) life for yourself by going to Secondlife.com. There you can create a digital image of yourself and meet the digital representations of other users for free. If you like it you can, for a small fee, buy property and build a house, start a business, go to clubs, restaurants, and other recreational places. Second Life has its own economy in place using the Linden dollar. Whatever you create there you retain IP rights to and can sell for real US dollars. Yes, you read that right. Lindex is the official currency exchange from Linden $ to US$. There are also in-world ATM machines to make transactions easier.

There is now a cyber life for children at Millsberry.com. It is a much tamer version of Second Life, but just as enticing. Children can create their digital selves and interact in-world all for free. They earn millsbucks by playing games at the arcade. I can see how they can learn about economy and saving “money” in such a world, but if they don’t get on every day to collect their interest bonus points from the bank, they lose that interest. Do I hear the word addiction?

This is Sim City gone insane. With a cyber life like that, why bother with real life stuff anymore? It is a society within a society, turned in on itself. We don’t need to interact with real people anymore. It’s much more fun to create and live in our very own cyber world.