One of Prof Ondrejka's Graduate Students at USC on Online Communities

http://recoveringreporter.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/fact-or-fiction/ "*This is part of a series of essays being written for a graduate program on Online Communities at the University of Southern California. The author doesn’t vouch to be an expert in the topic…at least not yet* I killed a man once…with the tap of a keyboard. I accidentally switched the name of a murder victim with that of a police lieutenant in one line of a newspaper story I was writing. The mix-up also escaped the normally-sharp eyes of our copy editors. The next day, the lieutenant’s mother called him to make sure he was still alive. The newspaper ran a correction, and that was that. I bring up this embarrassing anecdote because I started thinking about it while reading this week’s assigned readings about collective intelligence and virtual worlds: How can we know what is real when there are so many ways to represent oneself, as in virtual communities like Second Life, and how does someone keep a grip on the truth when there are so many different versions of the facts that are tossed and turned and shaped collectively and individually through the Internet and in projects such as Wikipedia. As part of our class assignment, I joined Second Life. It’s a fascinating romp through a world where creativity and fantasy reign, and the utopian element gives the whole thing the feel of a grand experiment of human potential. The avatar element was clever, but it also made me feel a little uncomfortable - like going to a Halloween party and not knowing exactly who you are talking to. Some people love this, but I like to know who I’m dealing with at all times. In real life there are physical and subtle cues to pick up on: Shrugs, the slight widening or tightening of the eyes, blushing. None of that can be registered when you are interacting with a wolf – is he a predator in real life? - and fairy – is this a man or a woman? Maybe my problem was that I needed to take the “game” part of this more to heart. I found it interesting that businesses are building brands here and using real-world advertising concepts to attract customers, as detailed in the Betsy Book reading, “Virtual World Business Brands: Entrepreneurship and Identity in Massively Mulitiplayer Online Gaming Environments.” Real-world businesses have popped up in Second Life, including news organization Reuters, which has a two-person bureau: Adam and Eric Reuters who are actually Adam Pasick and Eric Krangel. In any case, I like the concept of Second Life - no one gets killed here, even by mistake - but also see how reality can seep into that fantasy world in unsavory ways, as acknowledged by the recent decision by parent company Linden Lab to ban banks that promise financial returns unless they are registered in the real world. In a Sept. 22, 2006 Wall Street Journal story about the development of fashion businesses in Second Life, Linden Lab said they’ve been investigating accusations of clothing design theft and have a policy of closing the accounts of repeat offenders. Perhaps we also need more investigative reporters in Second Life.
..." One of our instructors, Cory Ondrejka, (who also happens to be one of the co-founders of Linden Lab) said in last week’s class that he found three errors in one news story about him and Linden Lab."