Can we call virtual worlds such as Second Life real?

The founder of Second Life Phillip Rosedale states in his book that:
“It doesn’t matter whether the world they’re in is virtual or ‘real’. Real is what exists in the mind.”
I do agree with him in some aspects but there are academics who would thoroughly disagree with him.
Shields in his book argues that:
“While common sense appears to supply a ready answer to the differences between the virtually real and the actual real, the issue of ‘the real’ has generated centuries of philosophical debate. (Shields 2003:20-21)
But how come that in our day in age actually refer to virtual worlds such as Second Life as real if they are only a place of our imagination. But by being virtual does it mean it is less real?
Of course we are only experiencing these worlds in our minds but does it make them any less real?
Benedikt in his book argues that real reality-the air, the human body, nature, books, streets…. Who could finish such a list? – in all its exquisite design, history, quiddity, and meaningfulness may benefit from both our renewed appreciation and no longer asking to do what is better done elsewhere. (Benedikt, ed, 2000: 31)
He also argues that virtual reality will never replace ‘real reality’.
But when we look at how we use computers and virtual worlds nowadays we have to consider that in a way we treat them like the real world. In respect to Second Life, people have real conversations, have real experiences, maybe fall in love, find friends, and make money if they want. Businesses from the real world come to SL to find themselves a place there and have a presence in it. Would they do that if it wasn’t real?
Second Life has transformed virtual worlds from being only games into something more real and more tangible than anything before.
Aren’t the conversations we have with real people not real? We are still talking to real people and have real conversations, in a space which gives us the chance to overcome space and time.
According to Shields- for psychologists and physiologists, a physically real object is one that can be verified by others and it movements tracked by most firsthand observes who perceive it.(cf Shapira 1995). But when one transforms a computer image or file, can it be said to move in the same physical way? No.” (Shields 2003:20)
But does it have to be physically real to be real in the sense that it exists in the first place. These things do exists and if they are tangible or not they are still there and have a presence in our world. I think we have to re-think the way we look at what is real and what is not. Of course we are in a way creating ourselves a Matrix kind of world but maybe for some that is a better way to live a life than the real world. Some people might want to escape the real world and its problems and issues and experience something new.
How can we tell what one experience we can call real or not. We all experience things with out minds as much as with our bodies if not more so. So one could argue that what we experience online in virtual real can be as real to us as what we encounter in the real world. Of course in virtual worlds we can not physically touch, or make our body experience things but the mind is just if not more powerful in helping us experience different things.
“The virtual troubles any simple negation because it introduces multiplicity into the otherwise fixed category of the real.” (Shields 2003:21)
Shields then goes to argue that the solution is not to debate the reality of the virtual, but to develop a more sophisticated theory of the real and the ways in which the virtual and the concrete are different really existing forms, how they relate to each other and to non-existing abstractions and probibilities. (2003:21)
He is right in saying that we have to look differently at virtual realities as they are not real in the sense that they are tangible objects or even would exist in the real world. But they are still a sort of reality, those worlds might be more real to some and less to others. It depends how one looks at it. If we compare virtual images in virtual realities we could compare them to photographs. Those are called real, and do exist but if we take that same image and convert it into a virtual world does it become less real? It is still the same image we could see before only now, the photograph is no longer tangible. Does that make it less real? Looking at a photograph of a place for example we have never been to before needs us to try and imagine how it would be like, and we have to take it for face value. We can look at it and see another place. How do we know it is real? Just because we know it is a photograph and they are meant to be real?
In terms of virtual worlds these are places not existing in mass and in a physical way but in our minds.
“Etymologically, ‘the virtual’ is exactly this: it is what is so in essence but not in form. The ‘actual’ contrasts with the essential, conceptual or ‘ideal’ quality of these common notions of virtuality, the opposite of the virtual, however is the concrete.” (Shields 2003: 22)
This might be true but the question still stands if virtual worlds and environments are real or not.
I think it is up to anyone themselves to decide what is real for them. If they want to experience different things and do certain things they are not normally able to do, it is a good thing but because they are doing it in a virtual environment does it not nesseccarily make less real to them.
There are still real people behind those Avatars and real ideas and real imagination. Just because we can only experience it with our minds, does not make it in my eyes less real.


Shields, R. (2003), The Virtual. Routledge: London and New York.

Bell, D. & Kennedy, B.M. (ed), (2000). The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge: London and New York


Biocca, F. & Levy, M.R. (ed). (1995). Communication in the age of the Virtual Reality. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Hillsdale, New Jersey.