Second Life

Author: S. J. Watson
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062060600
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Before I Go to Sleep, a sensational new psychological thriller about a woman with a secret identity that threatens to destroy her. How well can you really know another person? How far would you go to find the truth about someone you love? When Julia learns that her sister has been violently murdered, she must uncover why. But Julia's quest quickly evolves into an alluring exploration of own darkest sensual desires. Becoming involved with a dangerous stranger online, she's losing herself . . . losing control . . . perhaps losing everything. Her search for answers will jeopardize her marriage, her family, and her life. A tense and unrelenting novel that explores the secret lives people lead—and the dark places in which they can find themselves—Second Life is a masterwork of suspense from the acclaimed S. J. Watson.

Coming of Age in Second Life

Author: Tom Boellstorff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168342
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.

A Beginner's Guide to Second Life

Author: V3image
Publisher: Second Life Beginner's Guide
ISBN: 1595071903
Category : Entertainment computing
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
Millions and millions of people from all over the world have discovered the new virtual universe of Second Life. There you can meet new people, make friends, conduct business, build empires, whatever your imagination can conjure. This easy to use Beginner's Guide takes you step-by-step through the process of going from embarrassingly unprepared "Newbie" to a seasoned resident in no time. Learn how to design an Avatar for your new appearance. You can look like anyone or anything you desire. Buy land, build a house, a fortress, or even an entire city. Buy and island. Create new products and services and sell them to other residents for Linden Dollars, which can be converted to real US dollars. This book shows you how, with step by step exercises, examples, loads of illustrations, everything you need to get started and having fun.

A Practical Guide To Using Second Life In Higher Education

Author: Savin-Baden, Maggi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335242146
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Over the last five years there has been an increasing use of immersive virtual worlds, in particular Second Life, in Higher Education. A Practical Guide to Using Second Life in Higher Education is a pedagogically-informed text that guides staff in the use of Second Life for Higher Education. Although there are currently a growing number of books about Second Life available, much of the focus has been on designing the environment, ways of building and the general ease and use-value of the environment. This book is aimed at those who want to use Second Life for teaching in further and higher education. It provides both an overview and an in-depth stance about aspects of the immersive world for teaching, learning and assessment, as well as suggestions about researching (in) Second Life.

Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond

Author: Axel Bruns
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820488660
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
Explores our developing participatory online culture, establishing the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. Argues that what is emerging is no longer just a new form of content production, but a new process for the continuous creation and extension of knowledge and art by collarborative communities: produsage.

Learning and Research in Virtual Worlds

Author: Jeremy Hunsinger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135753040
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
Virtual worlds are places where humans interact, and as such they can be environments for research and learning. However, they are complex and mutable in ways that more controlled and traditional environments are not. Although computer-mediated, virtual worlds are multifaceted social systems like the offline world, and choosing to study virtual world phenomena demands as much consideration for the participants, the environment and the researcher as offline. By exploring virtual worlds as places of research and learning, the international practitioners in this book demonstrate the power of these worlds to replicate and extend our arenas of research and learning. They focus on process and outcomes and consider questions that arise from engaging in teaching and research in these spaces, including new approaches to research ethics, internationalization, localization, and collaboration in virtual worlds. This book was originally published as a special issue of Learning, Media & Technology.

Computer Games and Technical Communication

Author: Jennifer deWinter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317162617
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Book Description
Taking as its point of departure the fundamental observation that games are both technical and symbolic, this collection investigates the multiple intersections between the study of computer games and the discipline of technical and professional writing. Divided into five parts, Computer Games and Technical Communication engages with questions related to workplace communities and gamic simulations; industry documentation; manuals, gameplay, and ethics; training, testing, and number crunching; and the work of games and gamifying work. In that computer games rely on a complex combination of written, verbal, visual, algorithmic, audio, and kinesthetic means to convey information, technical and professional writing scholars are uniquely poised to investigate the intersection between the technical and symbolic aspects of the computer game complex. The contributors to this volume bring to bear the analytic tools of the field to interpret the roles of communication, production, and consumption in this increasingly ubiquitous technical and symbolic medium.

The Promise of Dialogue

Author: Louise Phillips
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027210292
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Presents a theoretical framework for analysing the dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge that builds bridges across three research traditions - dialogic communication theory, action research, and science and technology studies. This title provides an account of the dialogic turn through case studies.

The Sun, Energy, and Climate Change

Author: Eklas Hossain
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031221966
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
The Sun, Energy, and Climate Change conveys one central idea – that we can utilize energy without continuing to harm the planet by increasing our reliance on energy from the sun. This accessible guide stresses the sun’s importance as our ultimate energy source by focusing on climate change from an energy perspective and explains the naturally balanced energy transfer from the sun to the earth and society’s consumption of this energy. This book is for anyone worried about environmental damage from our reliance on fossil fuels and the global fight against climate change. The key message being we do not have to accept the inevitable and can work to prevent the worst.

Legal Issues in Global Contexts

Author: Kirk St. Amant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351865072
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
Today, it has been said, the world is "flat," as online media allow information to move easily from point to point across the earth. International legal differences, however, are increasingly affecting the ease with which data and ideas can be shared across nations. Copyright law, for example, affects the international flow of materials by stipulating who has the right to replicate or to share certain kinds of content. Similarly, perspectives on privacy rights can differ from nation to nation and affect how personal information is shared globally. Moreover, national laws can affect the exchange of ideas by stipulating the language in which information must be presented in different geopolitical regions. Today's technical communicators need to understand how legal factors can affect communication practices if they wish to work effectively in global contexts. This collection provides an overview of different legal aspects that technical communicators might encounter when creating materials or sharing information in international environments. Through addressing topics ranging from privacy rights and information exchange to the legalities of business practices in virtual worlds and perspectives on authorship and ownership, the contributors to this volume examine a variety of communication-based legal issues that can cause problems or miscommunication in international interactions. Reviewing such topics from different perspectives, the authors collectively provide ideas that could serve as a foundation for creating best practices on or for engaging in future research in the area of legal issues in international settings.