Duran Duran has purchased an island in Second Life, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG--further proof of my contention that we’ve run out of decent acronyms) with a population of 370,000. The band plans to give virtual performances, but they won't be the first to do so. Earlier this year, the BBC rented a Second Life island on which it held several music festivals. (Mark Twain famously said that you should buy land because God isn't making any more of it. How wrong he was.)

So What?

Playing in a virtual world supplies one killer advantage to aging rockers: their avatars conceal any physical ravages wrought by time or certain recreational activities. Even better, the avatars could have a high perceived reality quotient if the band wore motion capture suits and used face capture software to drive their virtual doubles in real time. At first blush, holding concerts in Second Life doesn't seem that different from holding a conventional Internet concert--either way, most of your audience is hunched over a keyboard--but I think it probably feels different. Participants get some sense of a crowd, which makes it viscerally a shared experience and hence perhaps more compelling. One thing doesn't change: There'd still have to be security personnel--you don't want any +5 Hobbit Berserkers rushing the stage.