Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T12:14:58.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Second Life, Video Games, and the Social Text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Steven E. Jones
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The prospect is sublime. Off the coast of the mainland are islands—in fact, sweeping archipelagoes—inhabited by educators and students. The residents have built massive modern classrooms, high-rises, clock towers, conference rooms, amphitheaters, auditoriums, and libraries among the evergreens, campuses with spacious lawns. To get to one of these islands, you can go directly from certain information kiosks or portals. Or, if you know the way and don't run into any invisible Plexiglas walls extending far up into the sky, you can just levitate, tilt into the wind, and fly there, while the landscape scrolls along below you like a map (which it is).

Type
The Changing Profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 264 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Trans. Paul Patton. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Gibson, William. Interview. No Maps for These Territories. Dir. Mark Kneale. Chris Paine / 907, 2001. Film.Google Scholar
Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Gibson, William. Spook Country. New York: Putnam's, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Hayles, N. Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Jones, Steven E. The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joseph, Barry. “Global Kids, Inc.'s Best Practices in Using Virtual Worlds for Education.” Second Life Education Workshop 2007. Sim Teach. Jeremy Kemp, Aug. 2007. 7–13. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge: MIT P, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Kraus, Kari. “Prim Drift, CopyBots, and Folk Preservation: Three Copyright Parables about Art in the Digital Age.” Metaverse U. Stanford U, 16–17 Feb. 2008. Lecture.Google Scholar
Ludlow, Peter, and Wallace, Mark. The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse. Cambridge: MIT P, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J. “Database, Interface, and Archival Fever.” PMLA 122.5 (2007): 1588–92. Print.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J. “From Text to Work: Digital Tools and the Emergence of the Social Text.” Romanticism on the Net 41–42 (2006). Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J. Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGann, Jerome J., and Drucker, Johanna, with Speculative Computing Laboratory, U of Virginia. Ivanhoe. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
McGonigal, Jane. “The Lost Ring: The Alternate Reality Game for the 2008 Olympics.” Avant Game. N.p., 12 Mar. 2008. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
McKenzie, D. F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts: The Panizzi Lectures, 1985. London: British Lib., 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Montfort, Nick, and Bogost, Ian. Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. Cambridge: MIT P, forthcoming. Print. Platform Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geoffrey, Rockwell, ed. The Ivanhoe Game. Spec. issue of Text Technology: The Journal of Computer Text Processing 12.2 (2003): 1–99. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
Caryl, Shaw. “Building Community around Pollinated Content in Spore.” GDC Radio. CMP Media, 23 May 2006. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Sterling, Bruce. Shaping Things. Cambridge: MIT P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Wark, McKenzie. GAM3R 7H3ORY. Vers. 1.1 Future of the Book. Inst. for the Future of the Book. May 2006. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar
Wright, Will. “The Game of Life: Will Wright Gives Us an Early Look at Spore.” Interview with Mark Saltzman. Austin Chronicle. Austin Chronicle, 1 Mar. 2007. Web. 9 July 2008.Google Scholar