A virtual world is a computer-based online community environment that is designed and shared by individuals so that they can interact in a custom-built, simulated world by definition. It mimic lots of the real world situation for people to foster their creativity, or so called "Second Life". Virtual world can be used for many aspects such as working, communicating and so on. For instance, in article"Going to the virtual office in Second Life", a new innovative way to bring employees together for conference and meeting remotely due to the tightly in travel budgets. This virtual community benefits the company from saving costs to pay for employees to travel, at the same time, employees can save time and engage in the meeting anywhere as long as they have network connections. However, some people think that they prefer to work in a face-to-face working environment instead of working in a virtual world because in this way, people can share the natioanl and organizational cultures, and "virtual workers should make a conscious effort to see things from their colleagues' point of view" saids Syrubder Kahaim the associate professor at Binghamton University.
Lots of people playing online video games, and are abscess to it. Some research shows that how you represent yourself in a virtual world of video games may affect how you behave toward others in the real world. In "Virtual world mat impact real-world behavior", "Our results indicate that just five minutes of role-play in virtual environments as either a hero or villain can easily cause people to reward or punish anonymous strangers," says lead researcher Gunwoo Yoon of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. So, in some ways, that virtual world has affected our lives. In virtual world, people can just freely to choose any avatars or characters to be someone else, and imagine yourself to be that unreal "character". You might do things that you're afraid to do in real life. You can create entity, group, or any situation despite the real identity you have. Some people gain confidence because of that, they feel like being a hero or leader and feel the sense of proud that they never experienced before. However, people might bring this unreal "you" to the real life and cause harm to the society.
All in all are many pros and cons to Virtual Worlds, it can be good to many people who used it as a tool to better communicate with friends, coworkers and classmates, on the other hand, it can be bad for people to bring the abusive character out from the virtual role-play to real world and cause harm to others. I believe in the future, the virtual world will be used more often for school and companies. It will be advanced that when you put on some device on your body, your emotions and movements can be detected and other people can actually feel your emotions. The virtual world will be even more real!
Work Cited
- Going to the Virtual Office in Second Life, CNN.com: Nov 5, 2009 http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html
- Virtual world mat impact real-world behavior, Health24.com: Feb 10, 2014 http://www.health24.com/Mental-Health/News/Virtual-world-may-impact-real-world-behaviour-20140210
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