Second Life does Davos

The apocalypse is nigh:

SECOND LIFE, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Reuters will conduct a series of interviews with artists, politicians and executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week, in front of a live Second Life audience.

Reuters Bureau Chief Adam Pasick will talk with guests including Linden Lab Chairman Mitch Kapor, author and entrepreneur John Battelle, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, and musician Peter Gabriel during the WEF, which takes place Jan. 24-28. They will have their own customized avatars and will take questions from residents.

The theme of this year's WEF annual meeting is, appropriately enough, The Shifting Power Equation. Second Life, for those of you who may not know about it, is "a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents." Reuters now runs a Second Life "bureau" staffed by real-world tech journalist Adam Pasick, but his avatar's name is Adam Reuters. According to Reuters, $1,184,358 real U.S. dollars--that's million with an "m"--were spent in Second Life over the past 24 hours.