In 1841, the British journalist Charles Mackay enjoyed quite a hit with his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds, a history of popular folly that debunked everything from witch-hunts to the South Sea Bubble. More recently, in 2004, the American journalist James Surowiecki won a large audience for his book The Wisdom of Crowds, an internet-fuelled argument about collective intelligence. Somewhere between these two opposing poles lies an almost mythical nirvana, rich in vegetation and nightlife, which calls itself Second Life.