Second Life still living its first one

 

In our culture of hype, the Second Life virtual world had its day in the sun. Almost a year ago, I contributed to the hubbub with a big story in Fortune about how even IBM CEO Sam Palmisano was calling virtual worlds a major future trend. More recently, with all the buzz about Facebook and social networking, you may have heard less about Second Life, or even assumed it was waning. But in a recent interview, Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Lab, which operates it, insists that both company and service are thriving.

Virtual doctors – medical training in Second Life

Forget those late nights on the wards grappling with real patients to perfect taking a history for the MRCP – medical training is going virtual. Second Life, the online 3D world, is set to become the world’s largest medical training institution and, as Bertalan Meskó reports, it could change the way we view education entirely. Second Life is an online virtual world, a bit like a computer game where you play the lead character. Since it was opened to the public in 2003 it has grown explosively to more than 10 million ‘residents’. The main benefit of Second Life is that it makes it easier to communicate with people from around the world and to use videos, images, texts and web links at the same time.