Second Life is a virtual, three dimensional world in cyberspace. It’s continuously designed, animated and recreated by its residents. In many aspects this description of Linden Lab, a company that started to develop “Second Life” in 1999 and that put its product on the free market in 2003, reminds of the “metaverse”.
The term “metaverse” was introduced by the author Neil Stephenson in his book “Snow Crash” in 1992. In this book he describes a vision of the future, a period in which the computer technology and technical equipment is far advanced and a spatial, with all senses perceptible cyberspace is developed. Human beings are able to enter and experience this metaverse with their avatars, a graphical personated alter ego. Second Life claims, just like the metaverse not to be a game, but an alternative level of communication and interaction among people, that exists parallel to the real world.