Second Life

Second Life is a place where anyone can have just that. It is a richly detailed virtual world where anything a computer programmer can imagine can exist: There are minutely detailed replicas of Rockefeller Center and human-size raccoons; sex and sadism and spiritual retreats; conference calls and a currency exchange. Almost all of it is created by the people who pay to dwell in it. Linden Lab, the San Francisco company that created and owns Second Life, acts as a sort of laissez-faire government. It makes money primarily by selling property, of which it can conjure an infinite amount.

Second Life seems like an overnight sensation--it drew almost a million new residents in the last two months of 2006, doubling its population. In fact, it began in 1999, when Philip Rosedale quit his job as chief technology officer at RealNetworks to realize his lifelong dream of building a virtual-reality environment. Most people he knew thought he was quixotic and certain to fail. He almost did. No wonder the 38-year-old Rosedale describes the recent onslaught of attention as "almost surreal."

What's real is that Second Life is a haven for entrepreneurs, with thousands of businesses selling things ranging from clothes to office buildings to body parts. Business is conducted in Linden dollars, but those can be cashed for cold, hard credit card credits. The in-world economy is now clipping along at $10 million--those are U.S. dollars--a month. Big companies are popping up, too, experimenting with what might be a look at tomorrow's three-dimensional Web.