Wagner James Au has written about high-tech culture for over 10 years, and is the author of The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World. He has been, at various times, a freelance reporter, a metaverse consultant, a game developer, a screenwriter, and most pertinently, a white-suited avatar named “Hamlet Au,” the first embedded journalist in a virtual world, beginning in 2003, and a role he still plays on his blog, New World Notes (nwn.blogs.com). He and his writing on Second Life have been profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, Harvard Business Review, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the BBC, CNN International, NPR’s All Things Considered, among many other places.
Au also covers the game industry, especially online worlds, for GigaOM.com, one of the web’s most popular blogs on the Internet business and high tech industry. He has spoken on all aspects of Second Life, online virtual worlds, and related Internet issues at such places as The Milken Institute, South by Southwest in Austin, The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, O’Reilly’s ETech series, The Education Arcade (sponsored by MIT), Stanford’s Metaverse U Conference, the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference, and twice at State of Play (sponosred by Yale and New York Law School).
The Making of Second Life tells the behind-the-scenes story of the Web 2.0 revolution's most improbable enterprise: the creation of a virtual 3-D world with its own industries, culture, events, and social systems. To date Second Life has attracted more than one million active users, generated millions of dollars, and created its own—very real—economy. What has set Second life apart from other online worlds is its simple user-centered philosophy. Instead of attempting to control the activities of those who enter it, the creators of Second Life turned them loose: users (or residents) own the rights to the intellectual content they create, and the in-world currency of Linden Dollars is freely exchangeable for U.S. currency. Users have responded by generating millions of dollars of economic activity through their designs and purchases—currently, the Second Life economy averages more than one million U.S. dollars in transactions every day, while dozens of real world companies and projects have evolved and been developed around content originated in Second Life.
Au has covered Second Life from the beginning. Contracted by Linden Lab, Second Life's creator, in 2003 to work as an "embedded journalist" Au has had unprecedented access to Second Life's creators and residents. He described his job as that of "a cross between a historian, ethnographer, and sole reporter of a frontier town newspaper," started reporting inside Second Life as Hamlet Linden—an avatar made to look like Hunter S. Thompson, equipped with a crisp white suit, aviator sunglasses, a Colt .45, and a bottle of Jim Beam—with his first-hand reports published on a blog he dubbed "New World Notes."
In early 2006, Au left Linden Lab, rechristened himself Hamlet Au (only company staff has the Linden surname) and continues to report on Second Life's continuing evolution as an independent writer through his blog. As Second Life continues to grow, emerging as the net's next generation and the fulcrum for a revolution in the way we shop, work, and interact, Au will be there watching it unfold, reporting on the collaborative creativity that makes Second Life the most impressive virtual society ever created.
Originally from Kailua, Hawaii, Au lives in San Francisco, California. When he needs to escape the virtual world, he enjoys reality-oriented hobbies such as travel, foreign policy, dining, sunlight, and dogs.
Praise for Wagner James Au and The Making of Second Life
“No one knows Second Life better, or, more important, its extraordinary importance to first life.”
—Laurence Lessig, professor Stanford Law School
“Historically, it’s a first – first-hand documentation of an entire virtual world, almost from inception.”
—Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs and The Virtual Community
“Wagner James Au has long been one of the most informed and engaging reporters on contemporary games culture. As an embedded journalist in Second Life, he is uniquely situated to explain this complex intersection of cultural and technological developments. He knows the people, has shared the experiences, can see past the hype, and tell us what really maters about life in virtual worlds.”
—Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide