Thomas Malaby is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and co-coordinator of the Modern Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. He has published articles and essays on virtual worlds, practice theory, risk, and mortality, and his book, Gambling Life: Dealing in Contingency in a Greek City (University of Illinois Press) explores human attitudes toward risk through an examination of the practice of gambling in Crete. His principal research interest is in the relationships among modernity, unpredictability, and technology, particularly as they are realized through games and game-like processes. His current research, supported by the National Science Foundation, examines how ethics are encoded and emergent in the production of complex online synthetic worlds through ethnographic research at Linden Lab, makers of Second Life. He is a contributing author to the blog Terra Nova, and his current writings can be found through his author page at the Social Science Research Network.