VIRTUAL WORLD
PROS & CONS
OUTLINE
 Virtual
Reality
 Virtual World
 Second Life
 Pros & Cons
 How Second life Affects Real Life
 Are we ready to live in a Virtual World?
VIRTUAL REALITY
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Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful technique that uses
computer representations to transform people's sense of
presence, so that they feel themselves to be in a virtual
environment rather their current one.
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This presence-transforming function enables people's
environments to be precisely manipulated in a way that is
not possible in the psychological laboratory or the
everyday world.
VIRTUAL REALITY
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Virtual reality(VR) refers to computer-simulated
environments that look, feel, sound and sometimes even
smell like the real thing. As technology advances, virtual
life becomes increasingly more lifelike and is applied
across a broader range of fields from entertainment to
medical therapeutics.
VIRTUAL WORLD
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The emergence of social networks such as MySpace and
Facebook, has resulted in new ways and channels for people
to communicate and collaborate.
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The graphical, three-dimensional technology of Virtual
World create a new stage of collaboration, communication
with an even higher level of interaction and complexity.
VIRTUAL WORLD
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A persistent online environment that allows users to interac
t with one another and an artificial world
through an agent in that world. The online part allows user
with Internet access to log on to the Virtual World from
any location.
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The persistent part means the world continues to exist as a
single instance whether a specific individual is logged on
to the system. This means that while you are logged out of
a virtual world, no one will see you but activity will go on
around you and you will be in the same place you where
when you log back on.
VIRTUAL WORLD
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In 2008, the Association of Virtual Worlds listed 250 Virt
ual Worlds, and the Gartner Group estimated that by
2011, 80 percent of active Internet users will be using
Virtual World (Frank 2008, 2).
VIRTUAL WORLD
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There are basically two types of Virtual Worlds
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role playing worlds

social worlds
ROLE PLAYING WORLDS
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Entertainment or gaming is probably the most well
known type of Virtual World
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The largest and most well known is the World of
WarCraft.
SOCIAL WORLDS
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Social Worlds or communities exist more for meeting
and sharing information, and to experience things and
places.
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Examples of social worlds are Active Worlds, Second
Life and Smallworlds.
VIRTUAL WORLD APPLICATIONS
Three applications that can exist within a social
world: (Wikipedia)
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Medical
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Commercial
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Education
MEDICAL
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Healthcare agencies offer information on a variety of
illnesses, conditions and addictions in the Virtual
World of Second Life.
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The disabled can experience freedom by temporarily lea
ving their disabilities and doing things, through their av
atars, like walking , fishing , exploring and other
physical activities.
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Virtual Ability is a hugely popular area within Second
Life that provides support, information and activities for
people of all disabilities.
COMMERCIAL
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Companies and organizations have established
commercial worlds as a new form of advertising
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Virtual Worlds allow companies the opportunity to learn
customer reaction to new products
EDUCATION
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Educational opportunities are thriving in Virtual World.
Universities have established locations in Virtual Worlds
– either entire campuses or simple classrooms. More
classes are conducted in Virtual World environment.
SECOND LIFE
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Second Life is probably the most well known and largest s
ocial Virtual World today.
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It was created by Linden Labs and open to the public in
2003 (Frank 2008, 1).
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It had an early reputation as being mainly a place to
play. Collaborative work, information sharing, and learni
ng activities have become more popular and taken over as
the major activities in Second Life.
SECOND LIFE
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
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There are many arguments as to the number of people w
ho have avatars in Second Life, but at any time there are
between 35-50,000 avatars online. (Frank 2008, 2)
According to a 2007 item in Second Life Reuters , 54
percent of users were from Europe with nly around 31
percent from the Unites States (Frank 20o08, 2)
The average self‐reported age of Second Life users is 33,
with 11.5% of users over 45 (Frank 2008, 2).
Communication can be voice or chat and can be public,
or private
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS & CONS

Pros
 VR is imaginably more personal than electronic mail
or instant messaging, or even a letter or a telephone
call
 VR is a great social leveler, it may find a common
ground across differences in age, culture, and
linguistic orientation (Biocca and Levy 1995)
 people will be drawn together by similar interests
instead of purely by geographic location (Biocca and
Levy 1995)
 communication will be both challenging and
rewarding, more effective and productive, and thus
more enjoyable (Biocca and Levy 1995)
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS

a tremendous opportunity for every 'connected' person
to find his or her field and/or discipline (Biocca and
Levy 1995)

after using a medium that provides total freedom of
expression face-to-face communication may be found
to be too confining (Cartwright 1994)
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS

When applied to therapeutics, augmented reality can
allow people with disabilities to experience places and
tasks that are otherwise unavailable to them. A person in
a wheelchair can play a basketball game with the aid of
virtual reality games. A person undergoing
psychotherapy to confront a past event can do so safely
in a virtual reality world without the fear of physical
harm.
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS

The advantages of virtual reality extend to the realms of
design and architecture. Computer-aided design allows
architects to build and envision a structure to eliminate
any potential problems before money is spent actualizing
the design. Fashion designers can put together fantastic
creations and see how they move and look before massmanufacturing their collection. Those who design safety
features such as emergency exits or rescue equipment
can see their designs in play without having to
manufacture a prototype and conduct costly testing.
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS

Learning how to react to any given situation,
especially a life-or-death situation, is one of the prime
advantages of virtual reality. Military exercises
performed in a virtual reality environment save lives.
Exercises designed to train military personnel allow
service members to experience a high-pressure situation
without the threat of danger or death. These exercises
can be performed over and over again until the person
feels comfortable and confident in that situation, a
scenario that is improbable and not feasible when
engaging in real-life training exercises.
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS

Productivity also benefits from virtual reality.
“Telepresence” refers to a type of technology that allows
a person to feel as if he or she were present in another
location. Used in the business world as a form of
telecommunications, telepresence allows a person to
conduct intimate business transactions in all corners of
the world without ever leaving his place of residence.
VIRTUAL REALITY - PROS
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It is great social way, users may find a common
interests across the world
Communication and learning will be more effective,
productive, and more enjoyable.
It enables users to interface with each other using a
three dimensional environment through sight, sound,
and touch.
It will improve some users’ skills without causing
any mistakes in real world.
It helps patients recover from strokes, phobias and
other illnesses.
VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS
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Cons
 an inescapable aspect of social life is the formation
and maintenance of interpersonal relationships
(Biocca and Levy 1995)

interaction ought not be substituted for community
(Mayer 1999)
VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS

VR will provide a communication environment in
which the dangers of deception and the benefits of
creativity are amplified beyond the levels that humans
currently experience in their interpersonal
interactions. (Biocca and Levy 1995)
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could lead to low self-esteem, feelings of
worthlessness and insignificance, even selfdestructive acts.
VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS

One of the largest disadvantages of virtual reality is that
the technology required for an immersive or natural
experience has remained elusive.
VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS
Even the most basic virtual reality hardware and
software highlights another of the disadvantages of
virtual reality, namely the cost.
Any system that attempts to provide an immersive
experience requires some type of display that will try to
fool the human senses. These systems are very costly and
can be problematic to use, largely because so few people
have the technical knowledge to repair or maintain them.
Additionally, most virtual reality systems are not readily
interchangeable with different hardware, increasing the
cost and reducing the long-term value of an initial
investment in such a system.

VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS
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Socially, some of the disadvantages of virtual reality as
entertainment have already started to surface, even
without an experience that fully removes a person from
his or her surrounding stimuli. One issue is social
isolation, in which the user of virtual reality relies more
on interactions that take place in a virtual world than on
experiences in the real world. This lack of true, physical
interaction has the potential to create incorrect
associations that are not part of real social settings. The
isolation could eventually cause depression,
disassociation and other conditions, if it is severe
enough.
VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS

Another of the possible psychological and social
disadvantages of virtual reality is desensitization. If
some users were to use virtual reality for entertainment
extensively, then they could run the risk of failing to
recognize the true consequences for actions in which
they are taking part or are viewing. When translated to
the real world, in an extreme case, this could cause a lack
of understanding of the effects of some actions when
performed outside the virtual environment.
VIRTUAL REALITY - CONS
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It will decrease human interaction in the real world.
The cost of creating a virtual reality system is too
high.
Training with a VR environment does not have the
same results as training in the real world.
Programmers are still grappling with how to interact
with virtual environment
If the virtual environment became much higher
quality, they will become attractive to those wishing
to escape real life.
HOW SECOND LIFE AFFECTS REAL LIFE
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Research being done at Stanford University's Virtual
Human Interaction Lab (VHIL)
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Jeremy Bailenson, head of the lab and an assistant
professor of communication at Stanford, studies the way
self-perception affects behavior. No surprise that what
we think about ourselves affects the confidence with
which we approach the world. What is a surprise is that
this applies in the virtual world too.
HOW SECOND LIFE AFFECTS REAL LIFE
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Bailenson's research suggests that the qualities you
acquire online — whether it's confidence or insecurity —
can spill over and change your conduct in the real world,
often without your awareness.
Bailenson has found that even 90 seconds spent chatting
it up with avatars is enough to elicit behavioral changes
offline — at least in the short term. "When we cloak
ourselves in avatars, it subtly alters the manner in which
we behave," says Bailenson. "It's about self-perception
and self-confidence.”
HOW SECOND LIFE AFFECTS REAL LIFE

In one experiment, published in Human Communication
Research last year, researchers assessed how an avatar's
attractiveness affected human behavior, both online and
off.
Overall, subjects using good-looking avatars tended to
display more confidence, friendliness and extroversion,
just as in the real world
HOW SECOND LIFE AFFECTS REAL LIFE
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Virtual behavior may even affect real-world health.
Randomly assigned avatars to 75 volunteers and divided
them into three groups: one group watched their lookalike avatars run on treadmills for about five and a half
minutes; another group saw their virtual counterparts
lounge around; and a third watched avatars who did not
look like them, but were of the same age and gender, run
on treadmills. A day later, they found that participants
who watched avatars of their own likeness exercising
had themselves exercised an hour more in the
intervening 24-hour period than people in the other two
groups
ARE WE READY TO LIVE IN A VIRTUAL WORLD

Are you really ready to live in a virtual, digitized world?