"Second Life": Virtual Embodiment And Its Spatial Perception

In the 21st century, with the emergence and the gradual maturity of the Virtual Reality Technology,(VR Technology),the relationship between human being and technology now is undergoing an more profound change than ever before. It initially took on an evident feature in information technology but far transcended. By means of bringing physical human body into virtual world, the cyberspace based on the VR Technology was predicted to be the next generation of IT technology and will change the overall cognitive structure of human being. This article, through an detail analysis and study on Second Life, which is an early-started thus relatively mature and successful experiment on virtual world, is intended to reveal the breakthrough of VR Technology on modern technology and the implied meaning of this breakthrough. Also, I would like to discuss the limitation of the virtual body and virtual existence.According to my study, as a first de-territorialized virtual platform, Second Life reveal a brand new existence of modern human being in virtual world by a series of avatar technology, that is, man in virtual world is absent, but at the same time, he is present. They exist in "local", but can arrive on the global site. By the means of virtual body technology, the whole global virtual residents are able to bring the otherness and multiple-existence of geographic location and national cultural from the into light, bring the invisible into the visible, and a step further, they are able to acquire an more efficient way, by which the human being was finally able to exceed the world of Cartesianism and Western Centralism, and unseal the Door of Perception. This, was the greatest chance VR Technology brings to humanist.