Second Wake

What took so long?   The only thing that was ever fascinating or instructive about Second Life was when there was a Second Run on the Second Bank.  Almost prophetic, really.  Maybe future economists will use improved virtual worlds like Second Life as a testing ground for Stimulus or Bailout packages before asking Congress pay for them in real dollars.  


Deathwatch: The End of Second Life

Eric Krangel, who now writes for Silicon Alley Insider, was more trenchant:

The very things that most appeal to Second Life's hardcore enthusiasts are either boring or creepy for most people: Spending hundreds of hours of effort to make insignificant amounts of money selling virtual clothes, experimenting with changing your gender or species, getting into random conversations with strangers from around the world, or having pseudo-nonymous sex (and let's not kid ourselves, sex is a huge draw into Second Life)...  It was about as fun as watching paint dry.

What's left for Second Life? Community meetings, underattended cultural events, and education.

Only compared to the life of a university professor might Second Life actually seem exciting.

The Future of Sun?

This article from last year points out an (ever more relevant) economic side effect of companies like Sun Microsystems, that are essentially worthless: their cash-on-hand equal to their market cap.  The assets could be better used by entrepreneurs to spur innovation and growth.


ABC News: The Poster Child for Dead Companies Walking?

Sun Microsystems is just the high-tech poster child for dead-man-walking corporations. Our economy is littered with them ... and they exert a tremendous, though rarely recognized, drag on our economy.

And that drag becomes even greater when we try to save them -- or worse, bail them out. Surely there is a better way to put obsolete companies out of business rather than slowly wither away, tying up financial, intellectual and labor capital for years in the process.

Perhaps what we need is some kind of formal liquidation event -- think of it as assisted suicide for companies in extremis -- by which they can easily distribute their assets to all stakeholders, shut their doors and hold a big, drunken "gone out of business" party. Then, those assets could be recirculated back into the economy to, in part, serve as investment capital for new start-up companies -- just as the employees would be returned to the labor pool, many of them bringing their experience to help run those start-ups.