This summer, SF-author and general web celebrity Cory Doctorow will participate in a Second Life contest to develop an in-world version of his forthcoming book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town [amazon link].
What I find interesting about this is that virtual books such as this--texts that we normally see in "physical" form being replicated and mutated into virtual versions in MMORPGs--are typically discussed without reference to a "physical" book's own virtual nature. Physical books are, simultaneously, virtual and physical objects, possessing a materiality that somehow seems to balance their inherent (and hierarchically superordinate) virtuality. I'm not dismissing the fact that in-world/virtual books work differently than their physical counterparts--they do, and that's a good thing--but it's interesting to watch developers, users, and communities come to grips with the shifting and sometimes contradictory articulations of what these new things "mean".
[via New World Notes]
Posted by johndan at March 29, 2005 07:03 AM | TrackBack