Q&A with Wagner James Au on his book “The Making of Second Life”

Wagner James Au began writing his New World Notes blog on the virtual world Second Life in 2003. For two years, under contract with the company, he was an embedded journalist. That meant he wrote about Second Life as a character himself, posing as an avatar named Hamlet Linden. Inside the world, he used his avatar to do chat interviews with other avatars in the virtual community, which encourages people to create a new world based on how they want to live their “second lives.”

Spending hours inside the world, he reported on the development of the new world as a participant in it. No longer employed by Linden Lab, he still writes his blog under the guise of Hamlet Au. Now he has distilled his blog posts and stepped back to write a book, “The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World,” (Collins, 2008).

There are a spate of Second Life books now, including the business-oriented “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Second Life” by Daniel Terdiman and “Second Lives” by Tim Guest. But Au’s is very deep based on his in-world experience and includes tales about the origins of the world. He debunks myths such as Second Life is just about virtual sex and spotlights the diversity of the community. (more…)