Over at Kotaku, they have a neat post summing up a series of articles on getting pregnant in Second Life, as originally published in multiple parts in the alt.newspaper the SF Weekly.

This leads into an extended comment on the extended Snowcrashism of SL by Kotaku's Eliza Gauger: "I find myself more and more intrigued by the aspect of futurism in the various articles I read about Second Life. Remember back in the days of Shadowrun and Snowcrash, we all thought the internet was going to be a totally immersive, avatar-based, 3D virtual reality experience? I was baffled during the nineties because we seemed to have been completely wrong. The internet was just a big BBS with no user limit and onscreen graphics."

She continues: "So I realized a few days ago that with the advent of widespread MMORPGs, we're finally getting the immersive, graphical internet we always dreamed of. We just took a roundabout route to get there."

[Oh, and another SL-related follow-up - Daniel 'Puzzle Pirates!' James has updated his weblog with a long, v. interesting discussion on the earlier Second Life server-related story in which he was quoted, noting: "Second Life has been built and operated more like a religion than a consumer-oriented business. I like to joke that Philip went up the mountain and came down with stone tablets describing how to build ‘The Metaverse’. Indeed, when I’ve seen him speak, he likes to refer to these immutable laws... My problem is that I think that most of these beliefs are basically wrong, or at least, not necessarily the case for a successful player-created world. Moreover, I think that they have absolutely nothing to do with what the player wants to experience in what is most definitely an entertainment product." Interesting!]