Edward Castronova is author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games (Chicago, 2005); organizer of Ludium II: Synthetic Worlds and Public Policy Conference; and author of Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Games Will Alter Reality (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). He is an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University and received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1991.