Thursday, June 26, 2014

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds


 

Virtual worlds are three dimensional environments in which you can interact with others and create objects as part of that interaction.  They can be used in many ways such as games, virtual offices, education, and research. 

The pros of virtual worlds are interacting with other people in an alternate environment.  When dealing with work,  virtual worlds have the ability to bring a lot of people together from all over the world. One member of the Second Life Virtual group stated "Not only did we save travel time, but because the environment was so engaging, a lot more ideas came through".(1)

One of the cons of the virtual world is the obvious lack of actual human contact. Virtual teams can't take advantage of the kind of impromptu "water cooler" conversations that occur in a real workplace, where colleagues can share information they may have forgotten to communicate in meetings.(1) Also there is also the event that some people could use virtual worlds with anterior motives.  In an era in which technologies can catch on and become mainstream quickly, the subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet wanted to know some basics. Could Second Life be used as a place to launder money? Are children safe in online worlds? Are there churches? Are you making any money? "We have never seen any evidence of such activity going on in Second Life," Philip Rosedale, Linden's chief executive, said of the possibility of criminals using Second Life to launder money. Rosedale argued that Second Life is a self-policing community and that users would likely be quick to report any behavior that seemed to indicate users posed real-world threats.(2) 

I think virtual worlds foster creativity because some people communicate better when they are not interacting face to face with people.  Ideas are being thrown back and forth in a virtual environment, fostering more and more ideas from others.

 

I see the future of virtual worlds becoming a reality more and more.  A virtual college class would be great at Baruch!

1.http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html

2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/01/ST2008040103032.html

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