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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
By I'm Virtually So Pretty
IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of technology on Friday hosted an event to explore the potential of virtual worlds, or the 3-D Internet. Although some attendees voiced concerned that virtual worlds like Second Life are overhyped and insecure, experts overall said that these virtual worlds, now used mostly for games, can transform society and business. During the one-day conference, students from MIT and IBM employees showed off applications of virtual worlds in development.
This bucolic virtual setting is more than just eye candy. IBM is working with the Nature Conversancy to compile better information about important river ecosystems. The visualization applications allows policy makers or analysts to model changes in rivers. By configuring the data on the right hand of the screen, a person can simulate what the effect higher temperature or changing water levels will have on a river habitat.
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://content.zdnet.com/...
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
By Natasha Lomas
You may be able to fly around chatting to giant rabbits or battling trolls but the lure of virtual worlds such as Second Life is not as strong - for silicon.com readers at least - as you might think.
Asked whether they'd ever visited a virtual world, more than half (58 per cent) of respondents to a silicon.com reader poll said they had never been tempted to find out what life as an orc is like. And although one-fifth (20 per cent) had decided to take the plunge once to see what all the fuss is about, they said they got bored and didn't go back for more.
Second Life - the business evolution
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://networks.silicon.com/...
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
 By Aleks Krotoski
I'm speaking at a couple of games/virtual worlds events in London this week, which may (or may not) be of interest to readers of this blog. The first is Science in Virtual Worlds, happening tomorrow night, organised by the Royal Institute and taking place at the Apple Store on Regent Street:
Online worlds are social spaces too, and that makes them attractive to social scientists. How do we develop meaningful relationships with people we've never seen or heard? How do those with autism or schizophrenia fare? Do gender roles or moral codes alter? How does information travel and how can there be economies, uprisings and fads? What are the ethics of studying the denizens of these worlds -- are they different from real world citizens? Join us at the Apple Store on Regent Street for a free event on how science is expanding into virtual life.
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games...
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 June 2007 )
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Inside SL
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
The internet-based virtual world Second Life may have a serious impact on people's real life relationships, one of Britain's best-known scientists warned yesterday.
Baroness Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, said she feared users of the popular simulation could abandon the messy intimacy of "real-life" human relations for two-dimensional liaisons in the virtual world.
Second Life was started in San Francisco in 1999 and now has seven million players who can create their own characters, known as avatars, buy goods, throw parties and build their own homes.
However, Baroness Greenfield says the implications have not been thought through. "People who dismiss it as a game will be in for a rude awakening," she said. "This will have a huge impact on society.
"Offering people the chance to have a permanent soap opera going on, in which they can participate, will be even more pervasive than reality TV such as Big Brother.
"This is the ultimate in that you can be involved, you can interact, but still you are hiding behind an avatar."
READ IT ALL HERE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...
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Tuesday, 19 June 2007 |
By Mitch Wagner
That suggests that current real-world leadership development processes may be misplaced, Malone said. Instead of focusing, as we now do, on leadership training, we should be diverting some resources to creating environments where leaders can emerge.
Disruptive Technology
Virtual worlds, like PCs, are disruptive technology, with unforeseen consequences, Kapor said. They will become mainstream quickly, but -- like PCs in the very early years -- they're now a very marginal phenomenon, Kapor said.
Like PCs, virtual worlds will enable people to do new things, and will create new economies of winners and losers.
But virtual worlds are still in the early adopter stage. The next, larger stage of users -- pragmatists looking for a payoff in uselulness -- has yet to begin.
"Virtual worlds are now at a tipping point," he said. "There is a critical mass of early adoption."
http://news.yahoo.com...
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