"Could anything do more to confirm our fears of technology disconnecting us from reality?" - Author unknown
After reading the article "Virtually the same as normal" about Second Life, I had find out more about it. This article was written before Second Life had become available, but it appears to be fairly accurate today. It describes Second Life as being a virtual world in which you can do just about anything you can do in real life. I do have some experience with a similar application, Playstation Home, that is available on the Playstation 3. After researching Second Life it looks it is an advanced implementation of the same concept.
It appears that you can have a second life in this environment that simulates your real life or you can virtually find out what it would be like to live a completely different life. I am still skeptical as to how well it implements things like working in this virtual world. I do think that since this is designed to be an enjoyable environment, they would focus on the fun parts of anything you do and leave the boring details out of the user experience.
Second Life is an amazing technology that has plenty of entertainment potential, but as with everything else it needs to be regulated by the user so that it doesn't become an addiction.
References:
(2006). Virtually the same as normal. New Statesman, 135(4816), 50. Retrieved from MasterFILE Elite database.
(n.d.). What is Second Life? Second Life. Retrieved April 25th, 2010, from http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US
1 comment:
I've used the Playstation Home application and dabbled a bit with Second Life. They are very similar and you pretty much have the ability to interact in a virtual life as advertised. I personally never found the appeal for these apps and quite frankly found Second Life to be a bit annoying. The entire world was convoluted with these hundreds of creations by other users and some of them were fascinating but most were of an extreme childish premise and served no valuable purpose. Despite my leave it attitude for second life, apparently the very large, worldwide corporation that I work for found it to be of some use and placed a virtual tour of one of our newer building facilities as it was being built. To each their own.
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