A USC Lecture
in Second Life

In the ongoing discussion about Second Life, opinions differ. Many think it's a frivolous fad; others, including its investors, believe it's what the web will become - a full-fledge virtual world where thousands of businesses can sprout up, much like eBay did with the first incarnation of the web.

According to Fortune, the believers include some of the world's smartest, richest, and most successful tech entrepreneurs. The chairman for Second Life's Linden Labs is Lotus 1-2-3 creator Mitch Kapor; other investors include eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Ray Ozzie, inventor of Lotus Notes and Microsoft's chief technology architect.

Meanwhile, tech juggernaut IBM is already using Second Life to gather 2,000 employees for a presentation on global initiatives, among them a $10 million project to help build out the "3-D Internet" that is potentially Second Life.

And speaking of potential, "In two years I think Second Life will be huge, probably as large as the entire gaming community is today," according to Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service (SNS) and its consulting practice, Technology Alliance Partners.