The movement from techno-idealism to disillusion is recapitulated here in accelerated mode, as the anthropologist author recounts his three years of "fieldwork" in the virtual world Second Life.
Its inhabitants begin by dreaming of revolutionary possibility, and end by bitching about neighbours putting up ugly houses and spoiling their view.
Meanwhile, the world's corporate owners, Linden Lab, appear to have recreated the kind of political economy from which many hoped to escape.
Nonetheless, Boellstorff's book is full of...
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