Thing 7 - Anything Technolology Related?

My second grader is doing a "Good Old Days" project in school. The students are charged to interview their parents with questions on different aspects of what life was like before cable, Internet and video games, and/or when their parents were growing up. Wow! don't I have a lot of reflection to do! The span of remembering how amazed I was by the first calculator I saw to how dazzled I am with the happenings on and over the Internet, makes me feel like a hundred year old already! Recently, the 3D online digital world "Second Life" has caught much media attention. For people like me who never have enough hours in a day, "Second Life" is out of the questions. But out of curiosity - yes, I took a sneak peek at their website anyway.

Second Life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by the cyberpunk literary movement, and particularly by Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. The stated goal of Linden Lab who developed Second Life is to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world in which people can interact, play, do business, and communicate.

In Second Life, the 3-D virtual world is entirely created by its users - Residents. It provides an online society within a 3D world, where users can explore, build, socialize and participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe. The showcased video clip "Building Suzanne Vega's Guitar" is fascinating to watch. This is definitely one of the digital technologies we should check in to regularly.