I'm excited to read Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human by Tom Boellstorff, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine, perhaps better known as his SL avatar Tom Bukowski.

One mode of thought has it that humans stopped evolving once they began to manipulate their environment to make their lives easier; there's nothing like the threat of extinction to force evolution. However, while our physical evolution might have slowed or even halted, our social evolution continues, as witness the rise of the online social networking phenomenon exemplified by MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and of course SL.

If I hadn't been such a poor student, I'd have gone into anthropology myself, so I'm eager to read Mr. Boellstorff's upcoming book, in which he relates his experiences being in-world for over two and a half years.

(Via chronicle.com)