Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

            Virtual worlds has been an interesting concept for a very long time. Even in the realm of science fiction, it has been a common trope where characters put on a headset and are suddenly in a completely different location and can interact with many people. Since the 2000’s technology has been very focused on the social aspect of our lives and virtual worlds have become reality. An interesting example of a virtual world has to be Second Life. Starting out as a game where people can live vicariously through their avatars, many companies have adopted the game and incorporated it into their corporate culture. Companies like IBM, the US military use Second Life to hold conferences and test new technologies with workers who are from many different places. While there are many different telecommunication options that also do the same thing, Second Life’s design is one where users can still have casual human contact and are not completely isolated. A major drawback is one faced by many multinational corporations. Users who are not face-to-face can accidentally incorporate their own organizational and national cultures that may not be understood or accepted by the people they are communicating with.

            A major problem that arises with virtual worlds are people’s identification with their avatars and the carry over effect into the real world. Researchers at the University of Illinois conducted a study where people were given good, bad and neutral people to play. Later, they were told to give spicy chilli or sweet chocolate to unsuspecting people. The people playing evil characters by far gave more spicy chili while the good conversely gave way more chocolate. This study highlights that what we do in virtual worlds can impact our thinking in reality. This is potentially a serious issue because virtual worlds tend to have no restrictions and barriers, a world with limited rules. If people ignore the rules in real life because of virtual conditioning, it can cause serious problems.

Works Cited:

Tutton, Mark. “Going to the virtual office in Second Life.” CNN http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/11/05/second.life.virtual.collaboration/index.html 9 Nov 2009

EurekAlert. “Virtual world may impact real-world behavior.” Health 24 https://www.health24.com/Mental-Health/News/Virtual-world-may-impact-real-world-behaviour-20140210 10 Feb 2014

Blog about Twitter

            It was an interesting experience having a discussion with my classmates over Twitter. Even though many of the accounts were new, I felt like I got to know my classmates a little better and it was easy to view their old tweets and see their pictures. Those things really gave me a solid understanding on who I was responding to. Blackboard discussions are good for certain things, posting longer responses, but the text options can be hard to use and it’s much harder to check for responses. Twitter has an easy feature to see new tweets as they are coming on and they are far more optimized than blackboard to check on your phone.

            Both these options are worse than an in-class discussion. To me, to have the most effective communication with the most ideal settings, few things beat a small class size with people face to face and everyone having a solid viewpoint of what we have to discuss.

Blog: Social networking sites

            Social networking has become an almost essential part of life. Most of our interactions have evolved to immediate communications with friends and family. For today’s blog post I decided to compare and contrast the experiences I have visiting various sites and how they are structured differently. The first, and one of the most popular sites is Facebook. Personally, I deleted my Facebook account close to 3 years ago. I found that I was devoting too much of my time in following other people’s lives. In a moment of introspection, I found myself having a tougher and tougher time being happy for people and I was envious of the lives people led on social media. Constant travel photos and new cars, clothing, pets hid the reality of people’s situations and I had to remove myself from that environment.

            Revisiting the site and most of my old impressions were pretty accurate. My feed was littered by people I had not spoken too in a very long time all commentating sage advice about the world while visiting foreign lands. It was striking and unsettling the nosiness the site created in me to find out what people I haven’t spoken to in years were up to. Compared to Facebook, I have a much better opinion of Twitter. Though there are certainly similar forms of envy, most of my twitter follows are based on sports, politicians and comedians who post entertaining and useful information. In the limited characters, Twitter gives me a brief glimpse into what’s going on in the world I am interested in.

            Another site I frequent is Reddit. Compared to twitter, it is far more involved experience, where I can have larger discussions with people. It is an experience very far removed from Facebook because the users have a level of anonymity where there words and ideas matter more than who they are. Additionally it is a site where you can follow and interact with people who have similar interests no matter how niche they are. I first found the site when I wanted to build my own computer and buy the parts individually. On Reddit, I found a community who were willing to offer advice and answer questions provided I put in the work to research things. The last social media site I want to blog about is called DeviantArt. I am not an artist but I do enjoy the works other people create. On DeviantArt people present what they have created and there are small communities of people who follow certain styles. I personally follow some pretty funny comics and I found the site when I was in middle school looking for wallpapers. It really is a creative-oriented site and what matters more than anything there is the art.

BLOG: Blog v Wiki

A wiki is an information sharing tool used by people to collaborate and discuss with one another. They are a common place staple of the internet today with the most famous wiki being Wikipedia. The emergence of Wikipedia has shown companies a very effective tool in creating a departmental tool where team members can be aware about the state of projects and contribute towards identifying and fixing problems that might go unnoticed. The ease with which companies have adopted wiki's is due to key factors such as their relative ease of use without needing extensive prior knowledge.

There are some drawbacks to wiki's however. One significant issue that can arise is highlighted by the cio.com article, "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia" is limiting wiki to each department. A problem that larger wiki's have created is the push back of against moderation, distortion of the original wiki's purpose as well as the need for careful curation and removal of outdated information.

On the other end of the spectrum are blogs. In many ways blogs are the modern day equivalients of journals and diaries that individuals can share with anyone. While a wiki serves a purpose, providing information to people who visit, blogs create a more personal environment where creators can share their experiences and view points. A way to highlight the needs for individuality and a personal identity is the issue of Yahoo and Tumblr. Bought for $990 million, tumblr has its user growth stagnate and plateau. There are a few reasons why this might be the case, growing competition from sites like Buzzfeed but a compelling one is the loss of personal identity. Being so publicly bought by Yahoo, many users being against the corporate take over of the site and subsequently Tumblr has lost the appeal it once had.

Works Cited:
Bercovici, Jeff "Yahoo's Next Problem: Tumblr's Traffic Isn't Growing" https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/01/21/yahoos-next-problem-tumblrs-traffic-isnt-growing/#280ececd5621

Locher Margaret "More on How to Build Your Own Wikipedia" https://www.cio.com/article/2436789/more-on-how-to-build-your-own-wikipedia.html

The Quest to Monetizing New Media: Loss of Privacy for Revenue.

A really interesting issue that has arisen alongside new media becoming more commonplace is monetization. The old media model of monetizing was pretty simple and straightforward. Products such as newspapers, TV shows as well as certain radio formats like XM and Sirius used subscription models where people would pay monthly. Another method for generating revenue are advertisers buying space and targeting customers. The issues that arose with new media is that in many ways those revenue generating models for the media producers have been severely limited and in many ways incompatible.

My paper elaborates on how new media has adapted to this situation coinciding with the loss of privacy their users experienced. A major event that I will be researching is the Cambridge Analytica scandal where Facebook was found to have sold private data to firms so that advertisements could be personally targeted towards users. This manipulation of handling of user data and how it all arises from the issue of monetizing new media was something that I was really interested about.