Skip to Content
I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life
book

I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life

by Mark Stephen Meadows
December 2007
Beginner
144 pages
4h 22m
English
New Riders
Content preview from I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life

Chapter . Happiness Is a Warm Gun

Real-world impacts are useful to note, but the main thing avatars are good for is practicing for real life. Consider how puppies play. It looks like they’re fighting. They bite each other on the neck and stand on one another and make noises that, if magnified to adult levels and bumped up a speed cycle or two, would start to sound pretty dangerous. In a game, the bets are on, but the stakes are low. Puppies are simply learning to fight and they both know it on some level. Avatars work this way, too. An avatar can be seen as a rehearsal mechanism we can use to figure out the important stuff in real life.

It was morning, and I was at my cliffside home above the sea, working on my chairs. Shivar was doing well, and ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Making Your Mark in Second Life: Business, Land, and Money

Making Your Mark in Second Life: Business, Land, and Money

Taran Rampersad
Second Life: A Guide to Your Virtual World

Second Life: A Guide to Your Virtual World

Brian A. White - a.k.a Ansel Gasparini
The Human Factor in AI-Based Decision-Making

The Human Factor in AI-Based Decision-Making

Philip Meissner, Christoph Keding
Animated Life

Animated Life

Floyd Norman

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780321550231Purchase book