Virtual Worlds

Facebook and MySpace were about the only virtual spaces I was familiar with prior to enrolling into Professor Boellstorff's course. I've heard of World of Warcraft, but did not really know what the game consisted of. The first time I heard of Second Life and the term 'avatar' was on an episode of The Office where the character Dwight wished to detach himself from reality by living through the character he created. Some of the things that I learned in class blew my mind. I found it particularly interesting when Professor Boellstorff first shared with us that he conducts research in Second Life. That's when the term 'virtual world' really made sense. The idea of scheduling a meeting and interacting in a virtual space at first seemed so unnatural to me. Now it seems less strange, and I'm a bit interested in joining Second Life just to see how everything works.