Book description
We've always dreamed of perfect places: Eden, heaven, Oz - places
over the rainbow, beyond death and loss.
Now, through computer technology, we can inhabit those worlds
together. Each week, between 35 and 50 million people worldwide
abandon reality for virtual worlds. In Boston, Massachusetts, a group
of nine disabled men and women inhabit one virtual body, which frees
them from their lifelong struggle to be seen and heard. The Pentagon
has begun to develop virtual worlds to help in real-world battles. In
Korea, where one particular game has 8 million residents, virtual
violence has spread into the real world. Fortunes have been made, and
mafia gangs have emerged to muscle in on the profits.
In these new computer-generated places, which at first glance seem
free from trouble and sorrow, you can create a new self. With the
click of a mouse you can select eye colour, face shape, height, even
wings. You can build houses, make and sell works of art, earn real
money, get married and divorced. On websites like eBay, people sell
virtual clothes and rent virtual property for real cash - for a total
of £400 million worth each year.
Tim Guest takes us on a revelatory journey through the electronic
looking-glass, as he investigates one of the most bizarre phenomena of
the 21st century.
In 1981 Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a Suffolk commune,
modelled on the teachings of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
Tim, or Yogesh as he was re-named, spent the rest of his childhood in
communes in Oregon, Pune and Cologne. But after the Bhagwan's arrest in
1985, Tim started a new existence in North London, where he lives now.
