The last chapter of Tom Boellstorff’s book, Chapter 9, is entitled “The Virtual.”  In this chapter, he talks about several aspects of what virtual is in relation to several aspects.  These aspects are the virtual human, culture and the online, simulation, fiction and design, the massively multiple and lastly, toward an anthropology of the virtual worlds.  Within each section he gives a brief analysis of how these aspects helped to form the virtual world of Second Life.

The First section, the Virtual Human, discusses how with today’s advanced technology humans have the ability to create new worlds for human socializing.  The next section focuses on culture and online.  In this part, the author talks about how a traditional ethnographic method to study is in that one should treat Second Life, an online community, as a culture of its own, and within in this culture exists many subcultures.  The next part talks about simulation.  Simulation helped US military as a way to train their soldiers.  In the virtual social community simulation is a way to portray real life actions and means into the virtual sense.  The Sims Online is a similar world like Second Life that also uses simulation to move their avatars.  In virtual worlds though, you can log off, whereas in actual world you cannot.

Fiction and Design talks about how one translates reality or imagination into what they create within Second Life.  You can create almost anything you want within Second Life, weather it resembles an actual world place, a place in a movie, or a complete made up world.  The thing that makes all these places real is the relationships that exist within them.  They are places where other humans come with similar interests and form a subculture of the online world.  The next section is entitled “The Massively Multiple” means that instead of playing a type of “game” where only one player could play, it defines an online world in which any number of people can be on at the same time. 

The last section of this chapter and the entire book is called, “Toward an Anthropology of Virtual Worlds.”  Within this section, the author describes how within an anthropological study, there are many forms of the human being and many ways to live as one.  The author came to write this book in order to “instill a sense of wonder regarding virtual worlds.”  It was different then gaining knowledge about them, but instead to wonder what they were like and perhaps explore them.  Online Worlds can be a place to socialize, a new way to live.  Within Second Life and other virtual simulation worlds, one gets the chance to change their appearance to whatever they wish, and then experience others reactions to it.