Bill Gross’ latest newletter on housing prices, interest rates and bond yields is worth reading (when are they not?). However, trapped in here was an interesting observation about the virtual worlds.

Am I really suggesting that life might lie within “2001’s” HAL as well as on Walden Pond? Modernity is certainly moving in that direction. There is an online virtual world of its own called Second Life, one of many metaverses that can now be accessed via the Internet. On it, or in it, inhabitants can create another life for themselves that goes beyond just the playing of a video game. Inhabitants are displayed as avatars capable of communicating and relating to other avatars in cyberspace. They can walk, cohabit, start businesses, buy homes – in short do just about anything someone can do “out there.” An IBM spokesman, whose company is leading this invasion into a second world, is quoted in the Financial Times as saying “These are real people. Sometimes people see an avatar and think they are watching an animated movie. They are not. Behind every avatar there is a person.” Have you messed up your first life? Why not try a second one. Get a different job, buy another house, become the Henny Youngman of cyberspace – “take my wife – please” – and exchange her for a new one. Success and that illusive happiness can be just around the virtual corner. All very confusing isn’t it. Old worlders would say it’s just a game, because you can’t touch its images. New worlders would say it’s a reality because everything’s just bits of information streaming into a consciousness. They might not have had computers at Thoreau’s Walden Pond, but they do in 2007, and the mystery of life and what defines living somehow has become ever more complex.

Tags: Bill Gross, Pimco, Second Life, Housing