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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

When I first heard of virtual worlds the first thing that I thought of was gaming because of the way the virtual world looks like. A virtual world basically a replica of our world but with no rules. Anything you could imagine could become reality in the virtual world. Once I started learning more about virtual worlds I soon found out that virtual worlds are more than just for gaming. Virtual world could be used for socializing, training, and even for giving the disabled the ability to do the thing they can't do in reality. Because virtual worlds are part of the internet this enables people to socialize and establish a community within the virtual world. Virtual worlds could also be used by businesses to train their employees. IBM has been using Second Life for just this reason (IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life’). They are using this technology to train their younger employees who have grown up playing 3-D video games. Virtual worlds are also being used to give the disabled the opportunity they don't have such as walking, playing different sports, and connecting with others with the same disability. Like in the article 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction a guy name David Savill has Asberger's syndrome and been able to a virtual world to connect with others with autism spectrum disorders.

The pros of using virtual worlds is that it allows you to be more creative like in the case of IBM training their employees. Another pro is that the virtual world allows people to replicate anything from the real world. This allows them to experiment with it without the fear of making a mistake. For example a building engineer could replicate a building from the real world into the virtual world and be able to find ways to improve the infrastructure. The cons of using virtual worlds for socializing is that sometimes people might become lost in the virtual world and forget about the real world.

Virtual worlds foster creativity by allowing people to come together and share ideas with each other. Because virtual worlds do not have any boundaries it allows people to let their imagination run wild.

The future of virtual worlds might be moving towards helping others improve their lives in more ways than it already does. Maybe it would be used for doctors making house calls in the virtual world and being able to diagnose a replicated version of the patient's symptoms.

2 comments:

  1. That's an interesting point about doctors making house calls, although I am not sure if that will be too accurate of a diagnosis.

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  2. Its true that virtual worlds can be proven to be helpful/useful. I'm not sure what your take is, but I believe that unless used for a disability or training for a job, virtual worlds should be left alone. Sure it is okay to play an online game once in a while, but if someone perfectly normal is stuck "living" their lives on the computer, it might be a somewhat of a problem.

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