Technology is doing more than just making our lives easier and more efficient, it is also changing the way we view ourselves and how we view media. An Emergent Second Life is a TV show made for Paper Tiger Television that looks at the culture of Second Life and the issues above. From the filmmakers:

For 25 years, the PTTV collective has played an important role in the tradition of media criticism, paying special attention to the inner workings of media production. The media landscape today, with the proliferation of new content providers, creates complex relationships and convergences among everyday and corporate forms of production, distribution and consumption. Media criticism no longer can take an “outside” vantage point, but must instead account for our general immersion in a veritable media ecology. This program, hosted by anthropologist Jason Pine (Purchase College – SUNY), focuses on identity in the virtual world Second Life and what it can tell us about identity in everyday experience.

It suggests that self-designed experiences may enable us to articulate emergent identities for ourselves and others. The program combines a live studio audience, videotaped testimonials of Second Life users who express profound personal investments while
creating their avatars and environments, and experimental machinima (machine cinema) to evoke the experience of virtual self-design and world-building:

If you’re in the NYC area tune in tonight at 8pm on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) www.mnn.orgor at 11pm on Brooklyn Community BCAT www.briconline.org/bcat/default.asp. Additionally, it will stream on Paper Tiger’s vlog and in-world on Second Life TV and at the open-air cinema on Purchase College Island in Second Life www.slurl.com/secondlife/Purchase%20College/85/91/57.

And be sure to takepart to learn more about how awesome Paper Tiger Televison is!