• CNNMoney, Friday, January 26, 2007 11:30 AM

Are games like Second Life just a fad, or do they represent the future of media consumption? The actual answer will probably be somewhere in the middle, because Second Life takes the user-generated content phenomenon to a level beyond YouTube and MySpace, allowing users to conduct business, make money and simply play in the world they help to create.

Blogging from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fortune writer David Kirkpatrick hypothesizes that Second Life is a better enabler of human communication on the Web than email, instant messaging, chat rooms and even online games.

At a conference dinner discussion hosted by Kirkpatrick last night, world leaders from a wide range of professional fields agreed; Kirkpatrick says he was taken aback about how excited scientists, academics, government officials and media executives alike were about online worlds like Second Life.

One Harvard literature professor pointed to the massive impact digital identity would have on our conception of reality and offline identity, if having an avatar really became mainstream. It could have economic ramifications in a variety of business sectors, especially marketing and advertising.

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