While doing this, he also introduces innovative concepts such as “homo cyber,” “age of techne,” and “creationist capitalism,” grounding on comprehensive list of works on virtuality and digital cultures. This strategy is based on his argument that “culture is lived out in the mundane and the ordinary” (72). In this regard, he focuses on what he regards as the “mundane” aspects of virtual worlds, such as lag, afk, and voice chat. Treating Second Life not merely as techno-metaphorical place but as “a form of place with political and economic consequences,” Boellstorff attempts to lay out various aspects that eventually highlight the richness and uniqueness of Second Life, such as the notion of place and time, personhood, and gender and race. While it presents a fresh perspective in observing new media culture, it also aptly serves his purpose to map Second Life culture “as a whole” (29) and thus demonstrates how ethnographic study of virtual worlds is conceivable and perhaps necessary. I find his approach towards virtual worlds not only provocative but also strategic. In his book Coming of Age in Second Life, Tom Boellstorff makes a statement that he wants to treat Second Life as a virtual world “in its own terms.” His rationale for this is that “there do exist distinct cultures in virtual worlds, even though they draw from actual-world cultures” (18). Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. He conducted his research as the avatar 'Tom Bukowski,' and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group.

Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. Coming of Age in Second Life is the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love-the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds.

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