Download Free Second Lives Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Second Lives and write the review.

We’ve always dreamed of perfect places: Eden, heaven, Utopia. Imagine gambling without loss, love without heartbreak, sex without exposure, experience without risk. Welcome to the fascinating world of online virtual reality, the land of invented places and populations that is entered and inhabited every week by nearly fifty million people worldwide. Each participant creates a virtual body, works at virtual jobs, and makes virtual friends and family. In Second Lives, Tim Guest, an internationally acclaimed young journalist, takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic looking glass as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of the twenty-first century. From Second Life to EverQuest and beyond, here are the computer-generated environments and characters that can easily become more engrossing and fulfilling than earthly existence. With the click of a mouse you can select eye color, face shape, height–you can even give yourself wings. Your character, or avatar, can build houses, make and sell works of art, earn money, get married and divorced. In this fascinating and groundbreaking book, Guest meets people who found meaningful love and friendship despite never having met in person, catches up with the companies that have used virtual worlds to make big money, investigates the U.S. military’s massive online global model that trains soldiers to fight anyone anywhere, and travels all the way to gaming-crazed Korea to get a taste for just how big this phenomenon really is. At first glance, these new computer-generated places seem free from trouble and sorrow. But Guest examines the dark side of this technology too, including the online criminals who plague imaginary worlds, from cyber mafiosos and prostitutes to real hackers and terrorists. It seems that one cannot escape greed, corruption, and human weakness–even inside a computer screen. Are these virtual worlds a way to enhance life or to escape it? Guest explores this question personally as he lets himself be transported into myriad parallel universes. By turns provocative, inspiring, and disturbing, Second Lives is a crucial book for this millennium. After all, real life is so twentieth century. Advance praise for Second Lives “Tim Guest is a young writer with the literary goods. My Life in Orange, his hit memoir of growing up in a commune, looked at his past; his riveting new book, Second Lives, looks at our future: the world of virtual reality and the spellbound people who inhabit it. The book is some kind of revelation–by turns compelling, chilling, and illuminating. Curious, intelligent, offbeat, and artful, Guest is at the beginning of a big career.” ——John Lahr, senior drama critic, The New Yorker, author of Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton Praise from England for Second Lives “An anthropological adventure but also Guest’s personal voyage . . . a fascinating portrait of rainbow landscapes and their inhabitants.” –Time Out London “Rich and colourful . . . an important mapping of a new social frontier.” –The Guardian “Remarkably timely.” –The Sunday Telegraph “Astonishing.” –The Sunday Times
This book aims to provide insights into how ‘second lives’ in the sense of virtual identities and communities are constructed textually, semiotically and discursively, specifically in the online environment Second Life and Massively Multiplayer Online Games such as World of Warcraft. The book’s philosophy is multi-disciplinary and its goal is to explore the question of how we as gamers and residents of virtual worlds construct alternative online realities in a variety of ways. Of particular significance to this endeavour are conceptions of the body in cyberspace and of spatiality, which manifests itself in ‘natural’ and built environments as well as the triad of space, place and landscape. The contributors’ disciplinary backgrounds include media, communication, cultural and literary studies, and they examine issues of reception and production, identity, community, gender, spatiality, natural and built environments using a plethora of methodological approaches ranging from theoretical and philosophical contemplation through social semiotics to corpus-based discourse analysis.
The engrossing memoir of a plastic and reconstructive surgeon involved in groundbreaking and life-changing procedures Through his work in plastic and reconstructive surgery, Dr. Donald Laub changed the lives of thousands of people who had been shunned by society. Dr. Laub’s influence fostered the development of three key areas in the surgical profession: pioneering and influencing international humanitarian medical missions in the developing world, being at the forefront of gender affirmation surgery for transgender people since 1968, and the education and training of over 50 plastic and reconstructive surgeons. His unstinting efforts to surgically correct cleft palates gave new lives to thousands of children in developing countries. As one of the original surgeons to perform gender affirmation surgery, Laub not only continually improved on his methods, but he also became a tireless advocate for the rights of transgender people. His non-profit foundation (Interplast, now called ReSurge International) has sent thousands of multidisciplinary teams to perform transformative and reconstructive surgery in the developing world. Second Lives, Second Chances is more than just a memoir; it’s a testament to how the determination of one person can bring others together to make a lasting difference in the world.
Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.
Rescuing a dog can change not only the dog`s life but yours too. This book explains how. It also tells you everything you need to know about finding the right dog at a shelter near to you, and getting him or her used to you and their home. There is also appropriate advice on training and caring for your new friend. This book contains moving poems, true stories and appealing portraits of actual rescue dogs, who found new owners and loving homes.
Set in Rembrandt's Amsterdam, "An Obscure Man" is the story of Nathanaël—innocent, open to experience—born like Everyman upon the stream of life. In "A Lovely Morning," Nathanaël's young son joins a touring company of Jacobean actors. "Anna, soror . . . ," the final tale, is an account of illicit passion in the baroque world of Naples. "An Obscure Man swarms with life. This intricately researched, imaginative, beautifully written tale of a young man's brief life in the mid-17th century is entirely engrossing."—Leona Weiss, San Francisco Chronicle "In these three stories, [Yourcenar] succeeds in making the essences of these past lives a part of the reader's future through the sheer intensity of their portrayal."—Margaret Ezell, Houston Chronicle
Truth is like a lens we apply to everything we see, it is malleable and transformative, we can bend it, mould it, shape it, vanish it. We do this to present the versions of ourselves we want the world to see, and to hide the versions we can't bear to reveal. Newly returned to Western Australia, journalist Amy Rhinehart pitches a crime podcast to increase her radio station's ratings. Her idea: to use the listeners of the show as its co-creators, with live-time calls and suggestion boards. The case: Jonah Scott, charged and imprisoned for life for the murder of his girlfriend, transgender woman Casey Williams. Jonah went to great lengths to hide the body - but when arrested, confessed immediately and pleaded guilty, negating the need for a trial. Amy believes there is something darker at the heart of this case and sets about finding the truth, investigating a world of drugs, sex, gender identity and religious cults. Threaded through the main narrative, the podcast transcripts represent a story-within-a-story, exploring the characters of Jonah and Casey and the relationship between them, interwoven with Amy's investigation into the cult run by Jonah's family and its potential involvement in Casey's murder.
The Girl With Two Lives can either be read as a full-length eBook or in three serialized eBook-only parts. This is part two of three. Author Angela Hart is an experienced foster carer; The Girl With Two Lives is the moving story of her experience fostering one little girl with a heavy burden to carry. As soon as Danielle arrived, Angela and Jonathan knew that her behaviour might be challenging, but as her placement continues, she proves to be one of the most challenging children they have ever looked after. What more can Angela and Jonathan do to make sure they are providing Danielle with the care she truly needs? The Girl With Two Lives is the fourth book from well loved foster carer and Sunday Times bestselling author Angela Hart. Another true story from the experienced and bestselling foster carer – sharing the tale of one of the many children she has fostered over the years. A story of the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye and sympathetic ear can make to those children whose upbringing has been less fortunate than others.
Explores our developing participatory online culture, establishing the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. Argues that what is emerging is no longer just a new form of content production, but a new process for the continuous creation and extension of knowledge and art by collarborative communities: produsage.
"There is a grace in this book, an invitation to beautiful, deep wisdom, a banquet to refresh your spirit for the years ahead."—Jack Kornfield, PhD, author of A Path with Heart "The Second Half of Life is a wise, unique, and beautifully written guidebook for those who want to live every day of their lives. A book for everyone who plans to grow old."—Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings When you find the courage to change at midlife," Angeles Arrien teaches, a miracle happens. Your character is opened, deepened, strengthened, softened. You return to your soul's highest values. You are now prepared to create your legacy: an imprint of your dream for our world—a dream that can fully come true in The Second Half of Life. Working with images, poetry, metaphors, and other forms of symbolic language from diverse world cultures, Dr. Arrien introduces us to the Eight Gates of Initiation. By mastering their lessons and gifts, you harvest the meaning and purpose of your life, and come into spiritual maturity. With The Second Half of Life, she takes you step-by-step through each gate to deepen your most valuable relationships, reclaim your untended creative talents, and shift your focus from ambition to meaning to grow into the exceptional elder you've always imagined you would one day become.