Clay Shirky from Valleywag suggests we don't get quite so excited about the idea of virtual life as we have been.
"Unlike ordinary network communications tools, which require a degree of subtlety in thinking about them... Second Life's metaphor is simplicity itself: you are a person, in a space. It's like real life. (Only, you know, more second.) As Philip Rosedale explained it to Business Week "[I]nstead of using your mouse to move an arrow or cursor, you could walk your avatar up to an Amazon.com shop, browse the shelves, buy books, and chat with any of the thousands of other people visiting the site at any given time about your favorite author over a virtual cuppa joe."
Never mind that the cursor is a terrific way to navigate information; never mind that Amazon works precisely because it dispenses with rather than embraces the cyberspace metaphor; never mind that all the "Now you can shop in 3D efforts" like the San Francisco Yellow Pages tanked because 3D is a crappy way to search..."
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