“Second Life is loosely and shambolically generating a new type of architecture. Who knows what that might mean for SL’s current jump-cut geography? In the future, perhaps SL’s overlords will start to clean up its shantytown chaos, repossessing homes and driving giant boulevards through it, as Haussmann did with Paris. Perhaps it will end up looking nothing like our own world; perhaps they’ll converge in ways we can’t yet imagine. It is a world in its infancy, unavoidably complex, useful, unpredictable and legitimate, with countless advantages over the real one.”