An example of modeling reality using virtual worlds is a program called Second Life. One of the different ways that this program can be used to create virtual worlds is to recreate a Chelsea hotel involving a murder in room 100 in 1978. "Michael Brown, an Internet technology support manager and singer-songwriter living in rural southwestern Pennsylvania" (Knafo, 2009) came up with the idea to recreate his view of this hotel. Here's his perspective of his reality of the Chelsea:
Michael Brown
Did you notice the details of even the painting on the right hand side of the picture? If not, it shows a picture of a hotdog-looking dog with "Chelsea Dog" tattooed on it's side. If you think that's something then I bet you wouldn't believe that politicians uses Second Life also. Let me explain, a Linden Labs worker was at a congressional subcommittee hearing that was broadcasting simultaneously in the company's own Second Life virtual world on a projected screen. The reason for them using Second Life in their presentation were to highlight a few questions like: Can Second Life be used to launder money? Is it safe for children? Can you make any money from this world? Basically, politicians are using Second Life as a tool to figure out if it's possible to enact criminal activities without out anyone knowing. Here's an example of a person in Second Life of a political party:
As you may already know there are pros and cons to virtual worlds. A few pros are:
- You escape the realities of this world for something more fulfilling to you.
- You can use virtual worlds to get a picture of how you may want design a place.
- You can use virtual worlds to fight crime by create scenarios in virtual worlds.
- It's a great way to bring people together and collaborate with each other.
A few cons are:
- Security flaws
- People can become more anti-social by living on Second Life 24-7.
- Subject to terrorist plots by recreating environments and planning how to bomb them.
- Can also be easily distracted while in virtual worlds.
- "Launder Money" (Musgrove, 2008).
As you already figured, it's something about virtual worlds that has a way to foster creativity. Based on these two images you can see that all you really need to create your own world is an imagination. Even blind people who haven't seen before, too have dreams that cannot be explained. Where does this come from? So as you can see this idea of thinking of something and creating it into existence is something is innate in all of us. I mean God spoke light into existence and we're created in his image are not? So think t your self for a moment, have you ever felt that if you knew now what you didn't know then, boy would things be different. Marrying that man that you knew was wrong for you, not having that child at a vulnerable age (God knows you love them), overcoming the anxiety of people telling you are not good enough, failing that test and the list goes on. One thing I think we all can agree on is that we all have problems and that we've made mistakes as a result of it and only if we had a Second Life I would be better off or so we may think.
With technology currently improving year after year after year we have to ask ourselves the question concerning virtual worlds, what will it look like? In my opinion, virtual worlds in the future may have such an impact in that we won't be able to distinguish between the two of reality and fiction because the virtual worlds are being built right before your very eyes. Look at Facebook, we have some people who live on Facebook for hours (You know who you are) and you can't get in touch with them physically face-to-face, only online. Look at reality TV shows as another example, these shows couldn't be any further away from the truth of reality but our minds gain weight on the lies they convey to us and try to implement those same misunderstood principals in own lives. If you ask me, virtual worlds are just the beginning when it comes to what people can think of. People are currently working on a 3-D printer. We are making imagination a reality but is it good for us? Let's see in the next 40 yrs.
References
Saki Knafo (2009, May 1) Chelsea: In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/thecity/03virt.html?_r=0
Mike Musgrove (2008, April 1) At Hearing, Real and Virtual Worlds Collide. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/04/01/ST2008040103032.html
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