I have the privilege of giving a guest lecture on Tuesday morning, and I will be speaking on political frameworks in virtual worlds. In other words, there are commonly accepted models to describe politics & economics that I have found to be replicated quite clearly in so-called synthetic environments.

The “virtual” economy of Second Life, for example, has a fluctuating currency exchange rate and generates millions of real USD$ each year in commerce transactions.

Although the topic is one that I’ve spoken on several times, I am particularly excited about this one because we’ve changed up the format a bit. Instead of just talking about how the virtual world of Second Life can be useful as an educational, research and commercial tool, I’m actually giving the presentation inworld (<<that term refers to being “inside” the virtual world). Basically, I converted each of my PowerPoint slides into image files, uploaded them into Second Life, then sorted them into a presentation tool. I will simply click on the picture to advance the slides, just like you would in a normal PowerPoint presentation. I will be there “live” to conduct the presentation, but we could also have set it up where the professor and I both use headsets and communicate through my avatar. Isn’t technology grand?

(This is a snapshot of my Second Life avatar. I made a new t-shirt for her today, in honor of Baylor’s heart-stopping, knuckle-clenching win over TCU last night.)