they would in the ordinary world. The difference from reality is the
opportunity to choose, without living and risking the choices. The facilities of
virtuality are exploited in this game, combined with certain real elements:
the users can create their own businesses, buy and sell objects, properties or
even perform arts (famous groups such as Red Hot Chilli Peppers have
performed concerts and charged for them in the virtual world). The currency
in Second Life (Linden dollars) can be exchanged for US dollars and therefore
the game becomes a real source to make (and spend) money. Recently the
environment has become the target of many multinationals and institutions
that do not want to lose their portion of the market even in the virtual world.
Therefore, they invest in advertising and they virtually sell their products
(although the money paid is real).20
Second Life illustrates perfectly the current situation of virtuality: the
escape from reality, paradoxically, drives us to the real in a circular process.
The virtual meets the real and the real is prolonged in the virtual. Perhaps
the only difference in the virtual world is that we do not have to suffer the
consequences of our actions and we can turn off the computer with a click,
something that is not an option within our real lives, quite possibly
accounting for the success of these kinds of games.
2. 4. Virtual Reality
By the turn of the millennium a technology known as Virtual
Reality will be in widespread use. It will allow you to enter
computer generated artificial worlds as unlimited as this
imagination itself. Its creators foresee millions of possible
uses - while others fear it as a new form of mind control...
(The Lawnmower Man).
In every period in the history of humanity since modernity there has
been a revolution in art. In the Renaissance this revolution related to
perspective, in the 20th century to movement through the cinema and in the
21st century we find technological interaction, manipulation and culture of
20 However, this may urge us to question the freedom of this virtual world, because when the agencies
that hold power and influence in the real world transfer this control to the virtual world, the latter
becomes a replica of the real world and less an alternative to it.
- 56 -