Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

3-D virtual worlds on the Internet, such as Second Life, are helping many people construct a virtual setting and hang out in them. Saki Nafo says in her article, "In Room 100, It's Nancy and Sid all over again", when the long time manager in hotel Chelsea was changed there were more than a few disturbing changes around the hotel with its new renovation. But with the help of Second Life, hotel Chelsea was able to restore its old renovation. They were also able to keep Room 100 as a crime scene where Nancy and Sid stayed, when Nancy was killed. It's a prime example of modeling reality with virtual worlds, that shows that even if a historic place has been demolished there is no reason why visitors should feel remorse any longer since those places are now able to exist, if not in real world, but in virtual world which is as close to reality as it can get, and better than just "distant memory".

Nicole Saidi talks about people with Autism in her article, "'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction", a step forward for people with Autism as they have an easy access to the internet, interact with people in their comfort zone without having to step outside. Bignell, known in-world as Milton Broome says, "For people with autism, we've found it's a very nice way of setting up situations they might come across in their everyday lives. 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."

Virtual worlds are not just for use in personal lives, big companies such as IBM are also catching up with Second Life. “New IBM employees separated by thousands of miles will be able to mingle, interact and share ideas in the virtual world before their first day on the job,” Ted Hoff, IBM vice president of learning, said in a statement. “They can learn real-life working skills such as signing up for benefits, developing code as part of a global team, and ramping up sales skills before they meet with IBM clients.” (http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/24/61/08.html)

Reportedly, online virtual worlds are more effective and a drop in the bucket than corporate training market that reached $55 billion last year in the US. Ted Hoff also explains other advantages of Second life, he says that it also adds a dimension to training because employees don’t perceive it as learning. That makes them more willing to take risks and be more flexible in their thinking.

Although it seems like a great achievement in technology, it also has a few down sides to it. Disadvantage of SL are addiction and distraction. Some of the distractions are very pleasant, but they create the possibility that employees will be playing when they should be working. Personally, it's also very easy to become addicted to using SL and spend hours on the system and become sleep deprived and neglect real life activities. Professionally, company HR personnel will need to monitor the behavior and attitudes of employees who are heavy users of tools like Second Life.

I believe that in future SL could actually take over office space. Because almost every corporate is looking to efficiently manage their resources and looking for strategies for cost cutting, this could really help some businesses. With SL, employees could meet on Second Life and discuss any important matter they need to and do the rest of their work from their homes.