While America broke the 300 million barrier in October 2006, online world Second Life hit a personal milestone of its own, its one-millionth registrant. By April 2007, residents numbered 4.7 million. Not bad given that the creation of Linden Lab was founded in 2003. Second Life is no mere online game. It's a "Metaverse" and the next generation of the Net. Its embrace will have volatile real world consequences in the realms of entertainment, commerce, and interpersonal relationships.

Holistic and Oriental medicine practitioners listen and learn from the total self. They recognize the importance of evaluating hundreds of points in the body. They understand the multiple independent and interdependent energy networks that flow through the body, each with its own powerful central operating system centered in the brain and the heart and gut.

These operating systems function within us like separate governments that co-exist but also conflict. Within each operating system is a "treasury department" that manufactures currencies: in the brain the currency is thoughts; in the heart and gut, the currency is emotions. Thoughts and emotions are the gas that powers our engines, but in our culture and society we have learned to repress our emotions and not trust our feelings. To be fair, we're also often advised to "keep our thoughts to ourselves," but few of us actually follow that advice.

The Internet offers extraordinary opportunities to literally recreate your life at every level — for better or for worse. It has already become an essential part of the lifestyle and work of a vast majority of Americans and people around the globe. Every aspect of life is being radically altered by the Internet. And we have experienced just the tip of the iceberg.

Surviving these changes — learning to breathe the new virtual air — will be easy, just as new media technologies have become second nature for most of us. As Wi-Fi Clouds and Ultra Wi-Fi become commonplace… as mobile devices become an elegant extension of the home video center… as wireless communications becomes the norm… as chips are literally embedded in our bodies so we no longer require bulky phones or iPods… as our brains learn to discern and process digital signals… as our bodies become our own personal energy sources… we will quickly adapt and wonder how we lived without these advances.

Virtual Worlds are 21st Century versions of 1960s mind-expanding drugs, but they are expanding more than just the mind. Virtual worlds and enhanced social networks allow us to explore new universes, expand our emotional range and depth, change the nature of communication and create different identities for ourselves. You can now create multiple versions of yourself with different names, gender, ethnic heritage, passions, dreams and even relationships.

Traditional identities and communities have defined civilization for centuries, but in the 21st Century a new world has opened that is radically altering how we define ourselves and how others perceive us. Second Life, Neopets, there.com, Sims, Cyworld, Kaneva, Doppelganger, MySpace, Friendster, TagWorld, Facebook, Gaia, hi5, Multiply and hundreds of new communities are being built in a completely new universe. Second Life is the first great city built in this new world, a bustling chaotic uncontrolled gathering place, like Chicago in the 19th century.

CHAPTER 1: Taking Your First Breath in a Virtual World

CHAPTER 2: Internet Alters How We Perceive Messages More than How We Receive Them

CHAPTER 3: Brain, Heart and Gut: Three Central Human Operating Systems

CHAPTER 4: Virtual Worlds are Real to Residents

Foreword
Virtual Worlds: Rewiring Your Emotional Future by Jack Myers with Jerry Weinstein is a radically different type of book that both discusses the explosive impact that the proliferation of Virtual Worlds is having on culture, society and business today, and also invites readers themselves to actually become contributors to the book, even sharing in future revenues and rights deals.