Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

       Virtual world have so many uses, art, science, politics, business, technology and many other fields. An example is how art and some of history/culture/social aspects of the real world meet in the second life or virtual world as explained in the article on the NYTimes by Saky Knafo “In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again”. In this article the author explain how The Chelsea hotel went through a transformation under new management which switch some of the particular characteristics like the mailboxes and Bob Dylan’s room were transformed. But, thank you to second life these will live on. On the other hand, like everything in life,this can have pros and cons. One of the many pros are how this virtual world can be used in different fields with the purpose of bettering the real world situations like on the article on CNN by Nicole Saidi “iReport: ‘Naughty Auties’ battle autism with virtual interaction”, where she talks about this second life created for interaction of people with conditions like autism, Aspergers, etc. Here also we saw how scientific also joined Naughty Auties and can be found working in a second life lab, this researcher is studying interactions and as Bignell said. “For people who have social, emotional, communicational problems … we can get them familiar with an environment before they actually try it out in real life.”

       Among the Cons I can count that since interactions in this second word are all through technology this might hurt the interaction one of one of individuals. Social skills in my opinion can not be learned in a computerized environment since these should be spontaneous.

For one we need to admit that creativity is exposed to it maximum expression in the virtual world, people are able to become whoever or whatever they want for that matter, have their dream houses, live a different life, create parallel worlds. Many markets have joined this trend and like the toy industry with the webkinz.

The future of this technology will probably be the replacement of many of our daily activities by virtual world, work, study, socialize through this second life