Economics of Virtual Labor

Avatar Based Workers Unite?

Sweatshop Wages in a Virtual World

Two fascinating articles dealing with labor in Second Life. In the first, the article describes a strike by IBM workers at their virtual campus. The second discusses the rise of virtual service workers, such as receptionists, and the fact they get paid as low as $1/day in real world currency. The question one has to ask when reading these pieces is this: Will having a Virtual Job as your sole source of income soon be a viable means of making a living? It also gives a helluva twist to the meaning of the word “telecommute”