The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, September 6, 2007 - 3B The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Thursday, September 6, 2007 - 3B COURTESY OF SECOND LIFE See that guy? You can be as lame in Second Life as you are in reality. MEDIA COLUM Life repackaged as a distraction ouldn't you know, the powers that run this small world are pick- ing up a few tips from the plebian generations.Our country's intelli- gence agencies are finally moving online. As reported in the New York Times, the government's Wikipedia-inspired Intellipedia will soon be joined by A-Space, a (wait for it) networking site based on Facebook and MySpace. It's about time the intelligence community en this country A EW and beyond finally gets SARGUS behind the KLEIN whole "Inter- net as information gatherer" ball. And not to belabor the obvious, but this is proof that the Internet - and the media world at large - has taken the instant access of information and pushed it to the extreme (the intelligence com- munity's recent developments still seem outdated). There are 12-year-olds who could probably set up a spread offense for a Divi- sion 1-AA football team, political bloggers earning White House press credentials, museums set- ting up audio walkthroughs via cell phones, sweatshops whose workers sitoncomputers allnight collecting virtual gold World of Warcraft to sell online to lazy (and wealthy) gamers. Culture is fast moving to the limits of knowledge and con- venience, at times to the point of over-saturation (for starters, once you start reading celebrity gossip blogs, your life spirals). It's awesome and disturbing. Case in point is the meta-real- ity of Second Life. Essentially, it's the Sims with real people. You get started with a credit card and a PayPal account, buying a per- sonal stash of virtual currency. The exchange rate is somewhere around $1 U.S. to $285 SLL (that would be Second Life Lindens, the site's currency). You build whatever you want wherever you want, be it Illuminati obelisks or wedding rings or stadiums. There's astonishing busi- nesses, shops, clubs and services waiting for your avatar, including live audio/video streams of con- certs and performances, a place started by the Department of Homeland Security for training first responders, a 3D interactive art exhibit with Swiss-govern- ment-sponsored artists and a city where every neighborhood is decorated in a different genre anime. The iPhone can't do that (yet). And it's all just filtered through a pixilated, imaginary version of yourself. But then there's the fact that individual users (not just cor- porations) make real money off of selling virtual real estate (the government is looking into the possibility of levying a tax on the site - it's that serious). Rape and sexual harassment incidents are popping up. There's even jour- nalism - seriously folks, virtual LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? GREAT. HATE IT? EVEN BETTER. MASS MEETING TONIGHT AT 8 P.M. 420 MAYNARD ST. reporting. There's something strange afoot. The point is less that the 600,000 or so unique users are living in a made-up world and more what drove them there and just what direction this world-that's-not-a-world is head- ing. Money, of course, rears its head, sniffs the air and smiles. No matter how far you get from realtsunshine and air and streets, you're going to find some ads, which means some people will buy stuff. The site's corpo- rate marketing capabilities have been debated across such web- sites as New World Notes and Wied (which also extensively documented the site's features and is an important source for this column), and it looks as if the site is a viable (though not explo- sively so) option for advertisers. Capitalism follows the money, no matter how deep into the Inter- net you retreat. The Internet gets bored eas- ily - no shit. But this particular manifestation is more than a blog or an RPG. If you're online all the time, Second Life is a serious distraction (genitalia changes, sections with loads of guns and it's every avatar for itself), but offers relevance (there are lecture podcasts, interactive discussions, etc.). An RSS feed from a website is one thing. Talking in a forum about news of the day before heading off (literally walking) to the International Space Museum It's OK if you don't have a life - just build another. (complete with planetarium) then catching a streamed concert is another. Who needs to burn precious energy walking when it's all in a few clicks and strokes? We were glued to our TVs in the '50s. We live through our com- puters now. It's no surprise corporations are calmly settling in - that's what they do. It's painfully iron- ic that this world which is not a world is really the same world we started with, after all. Second Life might be garish and ad hoc at times, but it nevertheless is an astonishing media development, a freakishly interesting muta- tion splicing the Internet with unlimited boredom and corpo- rate potential. It creatively repackages online everything we could experience in real life, and though it smacks of innovation, it's still a little creepy. - Klein's avatar got himself ejected from a concert for being too awkward. E-mail him with any condolences/suggestions at andresar@umich.edu. Brad Pitt in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," due this month, one of several films this fall with name actors starring in thromback monies. W ac o. rATUATIuN By JEFFREY BLOOMER and PAUL TASSI Daily Arts Writers Brad Pitt had it rough last year, at lea; screen. Stuck in a mess of convoluted emi as a distraught husband in Alejandro Gon: Inarritu's "Babel," he was regulated tc decidedly supporting role of a man whose is accidentally shot in Morocco, and the: stood, bawling when he finally got his on the phone to tell them what happeni Mommy. And what about Russell Crowe? I reunited with his "Gladiator" director ley Scott only to follow up the consume period-action vehicle of recent years witl role of a frigid banker who waxes sentimi in the middle of an Italian chateau in "Alt Year." Lest we forget poor Tom Cruise, w "Mission: Impossible III" more or less fi: amid persistent public outcry over scie ogy-based transgressions. Will Smith got siderable praise for his role in "The Pursi Happyness," but come on: How can that p MORE ONLINE at michigandaily.com BLOGS Why won't NBC let shows like "Heroes" and "The Office" play on your iPod anymore? Log onto The Filter (michigondoily.com/thefilter). Wilso nWhiteO M A A' ! Rent Sale * Great Locations! SEfcisciesapartments & houses available SProfessional management * 24 hr emergency mantenance 734.995.9200 CamepusslwlIssewhftemgltom bly stack up against blowing up Miami, which he hasn't been allowed to do since 2004? Maybe these traditionally blockbuster- engulfed actors enjoy these movies, the type of offbeat prestige roles that are increasingly in vogue forbig names no longer content with A welcome return to the roles that made them famous. double-digit opening weekends. We do, too. These guys want gold, or at least their agents do, and that's understandable. But with the exception of Cruise, these aren't the mov- ies that made them famous, and so to these observers, they just look miserable. Luckily this fall has an answer for all of them, or at the very least for those of us who thrive on having A-list Hollywood talent on its home turf. In the coming months there will be a series of films in which the industry's high- est-priced men get to do their own approxima- tion of the fierce all-American action hero in various incarnations. There's a small revival of the Western for Pitt and Crowe, who will star in the long-delayed "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and a remake of "3:10 to Yuma," respectively, and Smith gets a virtual one-man show with "I Am Legend," in which he fights vampire-like con- verts in a nearly decimated New York City. Crowe will also star as a cop opposite resi- dent badass Denzel Washington's drug lord in "American Gangster," another collaboration with Ridley Scott that may just redeem him in machismo circles. But no one gets to yap and giddily dominate the screen like Cruise, who will don suspenders as a U.S. senator who rattles off loud diatribes on the war on ter- rorism to Meryl Streep's journalist in Robert Redford's provocative political thriller "Lions for Lambs." These movies may well be awards contend- ers, but perhaps more important,they will also be pop-culture moments. This fall there's an See LEADING MEN, Page 4B 320 S 3601 a LOVE + PEr'NE WELGOtAE BIAQK!