A feature in this week's Economist, on news stands now, does something that Wagner James Au and all his fruity techno-utopianism never could: make me want to try Second Life.

How? Largely due to vivid descriptions of experiments like Professor Peter Yellowlees' in-game attempts to convey what it feels like to be schizophrenic to the healthy mind:

Peter Yellowlees, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, has been teaching about schizophrenia for 20 years, but says that he was never really able to explain to his students just how their patients suffer. So he went online, downloaded some free software and entered Second Life...

Mr. Yellowlees created hallucinations. A resident might walk through a virtual hospital ward, and a picture on the wall would suddenly flash the word "shitface". The floor might fall away, leaving the person to walk on stepping stones above the clouds. An in-world television set would change from showing an actual speech by Bob Hawke, Australia's former prime minister, into Mr Hawke shouting, "Go and kill yourself, you wretch!" A reflection in a mirror might have bleeding eyes and die.

Of course, go for the shitface eye-bleeding schizophrenia, stay for the virtual hookers. Florian Eckhardt

PS: The image is by Louis Wain, a cat fancier artist whose slide into schizophrenia can be seen in the growing madness (and, consequently, genius) of his paintings.

Living a Second Life [Economist.com]

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