Skip to main content

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds is one of the more fascinating ideas as we took a step forward to the 21st century. Virtual worlds can be and have been used for various purposes over the years. 

One of the best features of virtual worlds is the recreation of something:  this could be something new or something one experienced in the past. The article In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again by Saki Knafo demonstrates this. Hotel Chelsea which used to have an authentic feel which catered to a large amount of artists. But once the hotel was acquired by a corporate management they fired the longtime manager and increased rent. These changes lead to a lot of artists leaving. But after a while Mr. Brown who always wanted to live in the legendary hotel recreated the hotel on Second Life: a virtual 3-D world. He went on to inform Ed Hamilton, a resident of the Chelsea hotel who ran the blog of the newly created virtual world. This allowed the people who used to love the hotel once again visit and enjoy the former greatness it had. 

One of the major disadvantages of virtual world is people getting disconnected from the real-life world. It offers a escape to many people but once misused it becomes a great danger to oneself. According to the CNN article Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life companies have started to implement 3-D virtual meetings. As much as fun this can be  it cannot completely provide the environment the physical company and meetings usually provide. People have things to do in the virtual world which can prevent employees from having conversations and often isolating oneself. Virtual meetings won't allow employees to the atmosphere an actual physical meeting would often have.

Virtual worlds can foster creativity by allowing people to create their own worlds and immersing in it. Someone poor could live in a mansion or someone could visit places faraway. Virtual worlds have made a lot of progress over the recent years with graphics and viewing of a lot things becoming a lot more realistic. Virtual worlds might not have much progress unless companies figure out how appeal to various senses such as feeling something or smelling something in the virtual world.



Sources:

"In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again,"by Saki Knafo, The New York Times, May 3, 2009, p. CY6

Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life, CNN.com: Nov 5, 2009

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Next New

For my idea it's pretty simple. It's a crime detection app. This will let us know if any crime is happening around us presently but keeps the parties involved anonymous or ones that have happened in the past. This could be useful if someone is travelling to a new place and doesn't know anything about it. This will let them know if the area they are living in is safe or dangerous. This app should be run with police as they encounter all of the crimes at a certain place. Maybe it could be run by people but verifying the authenticity of crimes reported could be hard. 
2 comments
Read more

Blog Vs Wiki

Blogs and Wikis are two interesting tools that we use to communicate for our daily usage. Blogs tend to be more personalized and is often used as almost a modern day personal online diary. Blogs more or less represent a brand. A lot of companies also have blogs where they post information about something upcoming and or some promotion(Cook). A blog is like the soul of person but on the internet and visible to everyone. A wiki is more of an encyclopedia. It is a process of accumulating and maintaining information (Difference). It is a collaborative work between various groups of people. A wiki helps in collecting and sorting out information related to specific topic. It's like a never-ending cycle where you could go from one place to another on a wiki. In today's world convergence has become a important aspect especially in the social media world. Companies such as Facebook buying Instagram and Whatsapp shows how important it is for companies and people to know where the informa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Blog Social networking

Blog social networking has become quintessential in today's world in both corporate/business and personal life of people. Social networking was initially introduced for the purpose of communicating with people or long lost friends but as time went on people started to recognize the power and influence of social media which led to its exponential growth and at the same time a darker side of social media was also brewing. Social networking helps people connect to a wide array of individuals and if used properly can help a person obtain a job. " One of Crawford-Hentz's favorite sites is  Linkedin , a network of 8 million professionals spread across the world. Linkedin says users include executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. Typing keywords into a search engine, Crawford can scrape the entire network to dig out high-quality candidates that she can't find elsewhere."(Social) Linkedin is the most famous website used when it comes to profiling a individual ba...
Post a Comment
Read more