ABSTRACT
As we create and inhabit spaces within three-dimensional virtual worlds, we simultaneously create unique places that foster the development of communities, as users return to and inhabit the same electronic locales over time. These sites then become aspects of identity for both avatars and the human beings behind them, in much the same way that one identifi es with a neighborhood, workplace, or hometown in the non-virtual world. Furthermore, most of these virtual sites contain both ‘built’ and ‘natural’ elements, and the near-ubiquitous presence of these reminders of real-life nature attests to their importance to those who are constructing and inhabiting Second Lives. And as with other media-from advertisements and architecture to chat rooms and wikis-these virtual places become important means of cultural transmission, political activity, and creative work. The ‘virtually natural’ thus offers a three-dimensional rhetoric of nature that can be read and interpreted.
