Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: SL Media Mentions
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As many eagle-eyed SLers have noticed, Second Life is featured in a pivotal plot point in the final episode of Season 3 of Apple TV's The Morning Show starring Jennifer Anniston and Reese Witherspoon. Watch the clip above if you don't mind possible spoilers, in a scene featuring Stella Bak, played by Greta Lee. "One…
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"There Will Never Be Another Second Life" is a new essay I was thrilled to write for The Atlantic to mark the virtual world's 20th anniversary. Hope you read the whole thing, but here's some key highlights: The reasons for the virtual world’s longevity are as paradoxical as they are inspiring, especially in this moment…
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Enjoyed reading this long UK Guardian feature on Second Life's 20th anniversary by Simon Parkin, who also does excellent reporting on gaming culture for The New Yorker. Far as I can tell, this is the first major media story marking the 20th year of SL, though it definitely will not be the last. (Modesty forbids…
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"A New Puzzle Turns Earth Into a Rubik’s Cube, but More Complex" is a fascinating New York Times story about Professor Henry Segerman, who's been creating fun and mind-bending mathematical sculptures and 3D puzzles for years. I've featured several of them on New World Notes (see below), but the Times missed what could be Segerman's…
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In case you missed it over the holidays, the New York Times' story on the use of contemporary art displayed in major opera houses casually mentions that "the Chinese-born multimedia artist Cao Fei is showing a female avatar — a dystopian, pale-white head so imposing that signs have been put up all over the [Vienna]…
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"Second Life's vision of the Metaverse has endured…" Listen to the latest and final episode in the Wall Street Journal's episode on the rise and fall (and rise) of Second Life: Stream on Spotify here Get it on Apple Podcasts here Stream on the web and read the transcript here Links to Part 3 here…
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Streamable above or at the links below, part 3 of The Wall Street Journal's "How to Build a Metaverse" podcast mini-series just went up. Featuring Jeska, Daniel, and Yoz Linden, along with Electric Sheep Company founder Giff Constable, it tells the story of Second Life's entrance into mainstream awareness, with a whole episode on CSI:…
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"Virtual body-shaming: Why the metaverse won't fix our IRL beauty standards" is a thoughtful CNN article partly inspired by a New World Notes story from 2017, about full-figured avatars protesting a fat-shaming Second Life store. I largely lay the blame on the arrival of mesh-based avatar enhancements, which placed a premium on realistic human appearances.…
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Been looking forward to this for months (it's been that long in the making, I did my 2 hour recording with the podcast team in July) — The Wall Street Journal's podcast on the founding of Second Life: We’re in a metaverse déjà vu moment. Companies are spending billions of dollars creating new metaverses, imagining…
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French-fluent readers, the great Le Monde of France has a new article on a famous old story from the virtual world economy, part of a larger series on the topic: Comment Ginko Financial, la plus célèbre banque de « Second Life », s’est écroulée — i.e. "How Ginko Financial, the most famous bank in “Second…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 