Monday, March 22, 2010

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds


Second life is used beyond just gaming. Second life/virtual world are a place where you can basically do anything that you may not be able to do in real life. It is a place where can interact with people all over the world just like social networking sites but in virtual world you can fly if you want to just like we show in “Office Video” in class. You can dance, kiss, hook up with people, make house, and so on. In virtual world you can buy virtual goods such as buildings, vehicles, devices of all kinds, animations, clothing, skin, hair, jewelry etc. From personal experience, virtual world is pretty awesome and fun. It’s a great place to meet people and talk about it, built houses, invite friends to your house, have party and so on.

These are the different ways you can use virtual world:

You can use virtual world as a medical research or research tool in general to observe how people are acting, treating each other and so on.

You can use SL for virtual tourism where you can show around people about different things such as built model of NYC or museum, park, school, etc.

Businesses can use virtual world to promote their products as well. Also they can use Second Life to hold meetings, conduct training and prototype new technologies more efficiently just like they mentioned in IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life

You can use virtual world for education purpose where students can learn or share and take a part in activities that are sometime hard to do in classroom. Also you can use virtual world to show upcoming students libraries, Campuses, classroom, and so on.

Another way to use virtual world is for military training where you can recruit potential soldiers.

Cons of virtual world are sexual harassment, use of language because there is no control, security, gambling, strip clubs which might be not safe because kids can have access to it as well.

Pros of virtual world are meet people with similar interest, collaboration, creativity, alternative lifestyle, and so on.

Virtual world forest creativity because there is not limitation on what you create, the possibilities in the creation of an avatar are endless. In virtual world you can even try to be someone else for a while. Virtual world let you do anything.

Future of virtual worlds? Well the future of virtual worlds will increasingly function as centers of commerce, trade, and business. Businesses are already using second life to sell or advertise their product and making pretty good amount of money. For example, “In Second Life alone, transactions have reached a rate of 2.7 million US dollars per month”. Also more and more people will join virtual world and do things that they might not be able to do in real life.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.3336
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/11/1117_secondlife/image/opener.jpg

4 comments:

  1. 2.7 million dollars a month? That's incredible. I imagine the government will want a piece of that action and try to tax virtual money soon.

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  2. Virtual tourism sounds awesome. Traveling the world without leaving your home.

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  3. Yes Eric, 2.7 million a month. That's crazy. And yes that's a good way to collect tax lol.

    Stephen, i think google earth is something like that. i mean its pretty good in a way like they show you building and so on.

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  4. Sorry, it doesn't sound that great to me to travel the world without leaving my home:-)

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