Book Discussion: Coming of Age in SecondLife

On Sunday, August 24, the Steelhead Public Library sponsored a talk by the author of the book Coming of Age in
SecondLife, which is published by Princeton University Press.

The book's author, Tom Boelstorff is an anthropology professor at UC Irvine and editor of the journal American Anthropologist. His book is an ethnographic study of SecondLife, done in the same vein as classic ethnographic studies like Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa.

The transcript from this discussion is now online in Sky Qui's Blog - http://slresources.blogspot.com/2008/09/bukowski-discussion-published-online.html

The discussion was held in the Virtual American Anthropologist Amphitheater on Anteater Island, the UC Irvine Library's campus in SecondLife. We had over 50 people, which is a large crowd by SecondLife standards. SecondLife was very crowded that day and they had closed logins shortly before the discussion started, so many more people tried to come and were not able to get in.

I acted as moderator, using my SecondLife avatar Riven Homewood. Tom was quite impressive as he fielded questions and masterfully managed the chaos of a large online discussion done in text chat. We had a marvellously intelligent international crowd that included several anthropology professors and graduate students, and all in all it was a most interesting conversation.

The transcript will be published later this week in one of the major blogs about ethnography, but if you'd like a copy now please email rivenhomewood@gmail.com.