Cary Cooper: Virtual escape into another world

LIVING IN SECOND LIFE

We already inhabit virtual worlds. Whether we are aware of it or not, increasingly, many of our relationships are created, maintained and developed through the internet. We are involved in market economies via the web, buying books from Amazon, train tickets, planning holidays and ordering our daily food from supermarkets. Our entertainment also comes from virtual sources, whether games, films or sporting events.

But this digital existence has recently been taken a step further with Second Life ( www.secondlife.com ).

It started in 2003 as a sophisticated online game in which players "live" in a three-dimensional virtual world, buying homes, creating businesses, establishing relationships with fellow virtual citizens and engaging in a real market economy, trading for virtual goods and services with other residents. As the Second Life site explains: "This commerce is handled with the in-world currency, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online currency exchanges."

It may have started as a game, but it now has more than 330,000 residents from around the globe. There are more than 8,000 in the UK, each paying a monthly subscription of £5.60. For this they get a bank account with Linden currency in it.

Now international business is getting seriously involved, seeing the members of this growing community as potential online consumers and as an opportunity to test out their products and services. As Raz Schionning, the director of web services at the large fashion house American Apparel, recently said, there was no great expectation that such businesses would generate significant revenue doing this. "It's not the objective at this point," he said. "As with all the marketing we do, we're being innovative and keeping our ears to the ground. We want to see how people will respond to our presence in Second Life."

So, what does this tell us about 21st-century Britons? Why are we interested in joining this virtual world? Is it a reflection of the changing nature of British society, or is it that the technology is changing society? Obviously, it is a bit of both. I would argue that the changing nature of work, with its long hours, intrinsic insecurity and highly mobile workforce, has created a fragmentation between the individual and his or her social institutions. People now lead very frenetic lives, not connected to their extended families, to the communities they live in or to their employers. They find solace instead in virtual worlds, whether it is Second Life or Coronation Street or with their virtual friends or colleagues on the web. It is a trend that has meant that many of us just don't have enough time or energy to invest in other people, in significant and demanding relationships in real life.

New technology has been the "enabler" to this virtual world we are increasingly inhabiting. It has made it possible for the "worn and weary" 21st-century Briton to find a seemingly comfortable psychological and virtual space to escape to. The big question is, "is this good for us as individuals", or is this the proverbial slippery slope to greater alienation in society? I fear that publishers of stress books have nothing to fear in the coming decade.

Cary L. Cooper is professor of organisational psychology and health and pro vice-chancellor at Lancaster University.