Two Tin Cans

I spoke on the panel “Logging Off: Are Online Games Addictive?” at the San Francisco International Film Festival. As it turned out, the group conversation served a dual purpose. It was an adjunct to a screening of the film Life 2.0, which portrays various inhabitants of Second Life, but it also opened up a larger conversation about online experiences, the nature of addiction, and when and how we might decide that our online behavior is “a problem.”

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I’ll be appearing on a panel at the San Francisco International Film Festival entitled “Logging Off: Is Online Gaming Addictive?” as an adjunct to their screening of a documentary about Second Life entitled Life 2.0:

Sunday, May 2
Film: 1:00 pm
Panel: 3:00 pm
Sundance Kabuki Cinema
1881 Post Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Tickets to the panel are free, but require a reservation. Stop by and join the conversation!

Life 2.0 at the San Francisco International Film Festival

We’ve seen the raised eyebrow that greets us when we talk about a relationship that is conducted online, with a person whom we rarely or never meet face-to-face. And we’re all familiar with the part that folks sometimes have trouble accepting: that you can have a healthy, substantive and fulfilling relationship with someone purely through the exchange of text-based messages.* Mixed into that skepticism, I think, is also a sense that an online relationship is faddish. Newfangled. A new manifestation of technology for its own sake. Bound to fail or inherently misguided because it’s contrary to the way people have always naturally talked to each other.

It’s not any of those things.

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The independent film Second Skin just played here at San Francisco’s Red Vic movie house:

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This week’s Virtual Conference on Counseling in Second Life offered a wide variety of topics, not to mention the novelty of a professional conference conducted entirely in a virtual world. I noticed a striking theme that seemed to run through many of the presentations. Here are some examples:

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