second life

I was astonished at the article on second life. Not because of the actual existence of a virtual reality world, but because this is the first time I had ever heard of such a thing. It made me think a couple things:

First, second life isn't the representation of a new virtual world, but the symptoms of a new virtual world. The rest of the world doesn't know anything about this world, nor how to learn about it. I haven't heard about this online community despite being apart of many online communities. Obviously we know there is a great deal of information out there and the internet is showing us how we can't possibly fathom the amount. But Second Life shows us that there already exists people who live online because "earth inhabitants" don't know anything about Second Life, until it is published in a mainstream magazine.

Second, it scares me to think of the absorption into a digital world. I kept thinking about the World of Warcraft episode of South Park. Disturbing.