Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Second Life
Second Life
Imagine a world that you live in, that was created by the click of a mouse! Imagine everything you can do in reality, can be done with a virtual avatar. While all of this seems crazy, yet cool, the designers of Second Life have made the impossible, possible.
Second Life has a wide range of users. Originally, users certified as legal adults were the only users allowed on the network. Second Life has opened the gate for other users to enjoy the virtual world by creating Teen Second Life, while keeping the original virtual world with Adult Only Second Life. The difference between the two worlds is, Teen Second Life allows users of the ages 13 to 18 to enjoy, while Adult Only Second Life specifies users of 18 and older.
A virtual world would not be much of a virtual world without characters. It is up to the user to create their character in the Second Life world. The "avatars" that are created, are the virtual living beings that conduct all the activities the user can imagine. From shopping at a store for clothes to attending a class, or even a job interview, the opportunities are endless. While the virtual life may seem free, Second Life requires monthly payments of its users to use the social network. In order to buy items within Second Life, the exchange rate for American dollars to Linden dollars is 1 to 266. While exploring this social network, focusing on the original users is where most of the social interactions occur.
Original users of Second L~{e range from a high school graduate to a grandmother baking cookies at home while enjoying retirement. Anybody and everybody can be a user, or resident on Second Life. The community is constantly growing, and with new inventions being created by the residents of Second Life, the end of the virtual world is far from sight. Although Second Life has created a new culture on the internet, cultures from other social networks seem to find their way into the virtual world. Fakes, con artist, whatever the name may be, the authenticity of the characters on Second Life is left to the imagination of its' users. Similar incidents have occurred on YouTube. Dr. Wesch, in his studies referred to the case of the two Emo kids that end up falling in love. While the story between the two seemed to be real, later the relationship was revealed as a fictional story, created by both kids. Whether it be in the name of fun, or just for the excitement of being someone you are not, faking identities is becoming a culture within all social networks. Another question that arises from many social sites such as Second Life and YouTube, is what is the purpose of the site?
When thinking about the world of Second Life, every transaction between residents occur in every day real life. The question that arises is what is the point in playing real life, while living real life? Jean Burgess & Joshua Green, studied some of the same questions with users of YouTube. Within their study people responded by saying they were able to view old video's from the past. It allowed them to revisit a place in time that they once lived and enjoyed. Are these social sites becoming relief of the lives we live today? The answer may not be a blunt yes or no, but the patterns of people and their behavior on these sites would lean towards yes.
Unlike YouTube, Second Life allows the interactions between residents to happen through virtual characters, Lives lived through animation and the imagination of its users. To some, Second Life maybe a tool for business transactions, while others may use it for dating. Second Life has taken the capabilities of other social networks and placed them within its own. The freedom of life is now given through the internet. Why go in for work when you can do it from your computer screen? Or why go on a date when your avatar can meet your dates avatar online?
While the impossible has become possible we begin to live lives that are not our own. We begin to live through characters that are created in our imagination while continuing our own lives outside the virtual world. Life is no longer life when we control all that we can do. While in reality life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you are going to get. The days of living through social networks need to stop. We need to remember how to interact with each other face to face.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Second Life 1st Draft
Second Life
Imagine a world that you live in, that was created by the click of a mouse! Imagine everything you can do in reality, can be done with a virtual avatar. While all of this seems crazy, yet cool, the designers of Second Life have made the impossible, possible.
Second Life has a wide range of users. Originally, users certified as legal adults were the only users allowed on the network. Second Life has opened the gate for other users to enjoy the virtual world by creating Teen Second Life, while keeping the original virtual world with Adult Only Second Life. The difference between the two worlds is, Teen Second Life allows users of the ages 13 to18 to enjoy, while Adult Only Second Life specifies users of 18 and older. A virtual world would not be much of a virtual world without characters.
It is up to the user to create their character in the Second Life world. The “avatars” that are created, are the virtual living beings that conduct all the activities the user can imagine. From shopping at a store for clothes to attending a class, or even a job interview, the opportunities are endless. While the virtual life may seem free, Second Life requires monthly payments of its users to use the social network, and in order to buy items within Second Life, the exchange rate for American dollars to Linden dollars is 1 to 266. While exploring this social network, focusing on the original users is where most of the social interactions occur.
Original users of Second Life range from a high school graduate, to a grandmother baking cookies at home while enjoying retirement. Anybody and everybody can be a user, or resident on Second Life. The community is constantly growing, and with new inventions being created by the residents of Second Life, the end of the virtual world is far from sight. Although Second Life has created a new culture on the internet, cultures from other social networks seem to find their way into the virtual world. Fakes, con artist, whatever the name may be, the authenticity of the characters on Second Life is left to the imagination of its’ users. Similar incidents have occurred on YouTube. Dr. Wesch, in his studies referred to the case of the two Emo kids that end up falling in love. While the story between the two seemed to be real, later the relationship was revealed as a fictional story, created by both actors. Whether it be in the name of fun, or just for the excitement of being someone you are not, faking identities is becoming a culture within all social networks. Another question that arises from many social sites such as Second Life and YouTube, is what is the purpose of the site?
When thinking about the world of Second Life every transaction between residents occur in every day real life. The question that arises is, what is the point in play real life while living real life? Burgess, Jean & Green, Joshua, studied some of the same questions with users of YouTube. Within their study people responded by saying they were able to view old video’s from the past. It allowed them to revisit a place in time that they once lived and enjoyed. Are these social sites becoming a relief of the lives we live today? The answer may not be a blunt yes or no, but the patterns of people and their behavior on these sites would lean towards yes.
Unlike YouTube, Second Life allows the interactions between residents to happen through their virtual characters. Lives lived through animation and the imagination of its users. To some, Second Life maybe a tool for business transactions, while others may use it for dating. Second Life has taken the capabilities of other social networks and placed them within its own. The freedom of life is now given through the internet. Why go in for work when you can do it from your computer screen? Or why go on a date when your avatar can meet you dates avatar online? While the impossible has become possible we begin to live lives that are not our own. We begin to life through characters that are created in our imagination while continuing our own lives. Life is no longer life when we control all that we can do, while in reality life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you are going to get. http://www.appstate.edu/~stanovskydj/internet.html#two
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
First Internet Experience
Life was simple, and then the internet and it’s seemingly endless uses were invented. The internet has reshaped society as we know it today. Letters that came in the mail now come in the form of black letters on a screen that reads, Merry Christmas! Instead of going to the store to buy clothes and experience the atmosphere of a retail store, you now can go online and purchase items for the same price and receive them three days later in the mail. The world has literally flipped on its axis changing everything as we know it.
As a child, the outdoors was my domain. It was if me and nature were inseparable. I was the kid that would come in after playing in the mud hole dripping God knows what all over the carpet. I would clean up and go right back into the mud hole. My parents raised me as if I were George of the Jungle. I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what even a computer was, let alone the capabilities of the internet. A day not spent outdoors was almost seen as voodoo in my eyes. Finally, the day that every child loves, going to my grandparent’s house.
My grandfather was a truck driver, so when it came to dealing with anything that wasn’t on wheels, he couldn’t tell you a thing about it. My grandmother on the other hand was a secretary for the trucking company that my grandfather worked for, so she knew a great deal about computers and using the internet. My first encounter with the internet was when I was about 10 or 11 years old and was on a twelve-inch Macintosh screen. The size of the computer screen has always been a great helper of mine because I am blind as a bat. As I’m looking at this screen, I decided I would like to find some cheat codes for the best computer game ever invented, The Sims. At the time, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox wasn’t invented; instead, I had to rely on Netscape Navigator. Netscape was pretty cool because it had the helm of a ship as part of its logo, and while waiting on the page to load, a shooting star would race across the top to the “N” that completed the logo. Before I was able to reach this part, I had to sit through what seemed like two minutes of torture.
Whoever invented dialup should literally shoot themselves twice in the head. It was a painful screech along with the sound of an unavailable TV channel that was shown by a white screen and a lot of black dots dancing all over the place, as if there were a million ants in your TV. Although today we have high-speed internet provided through cable that comes with no sound. I will always remember my first time using dialup. Finally, the screech along with the TV sound came to end, and here I was looking at a white screen with a blank bar at the top and a mini magnifying glass at the far right of the bar. My friend and fellow Sims player told me about a website that I could go to and find all the cheat codes I could ever dream of. I pulled out the little yellow sticky note that I had written the website on and began to type. After typing the “m” in “com” I pressed the enter key and waited impatiently for about 45 seconds. Finally, it was in front of me as my friend had promised and I was amazed.
It was if I had entered a foreign land. The entire computer had turned into gold, and I grew a pair of wings. I literally felt that life couldn’t possibly get any better than this. I could access all the cheat codes at the click of a button. Who had ever heard of such a thing? I used to think that I lived like the Flintstones, and anyone who had a computer with the internet was living like the Jetsons. My life changed that very day and I can’t complain. The world that we live in has been made around computers and especially the internet. I still have some of my old ways that are seen as a lost art today. Making a card for someone on Christmas holds much more value than an email that says Merry Christmas with Santa Clause mooning you with his rosy cheeks.
Attempting to summarize the way I felt at the time is a hard task. I went through a mix of emotions. At first I felt as Bush did in that technology is the future and that it would make life easier as we know it. On the other hand, I felt like Hawthorne, that it was voodoo in the sense that it was new and growing so fast. It was almost a drug in the sense that it is addicting. People would forget that you can pick up a phone and call someone rather than emailing them. My first encounter with the internet was simply amazing to sum up the entire experience in one word and that is because I could have all the money I wanted on The Sims now that I had the cheat code.
As a child, the outdoors was my domain. It was if me and nature were inseparable. I was the kid that would come in after playing in the mud hole dripping God knows what all over the carpet. I would clean up and go right back into the mud hole. My parents raised me as if I were George of the Jungle. I didn’t have the slightest clue as to what even a computer was, let alone the capabilities of the internet. A day not spent outdoors was almost seen as voodoo in my eyes. Finally, the day that every child loves, going to my grandparent’s house.
My grandfather was a truck driver, so when it came to dealing with anything that wasn’t on wheels, he couldn’t tell you a thing about it. My grandmother on the other hand was a secretary for the trucking company that my grandfather worked for, so she knew a great deal about computers and using the internet. My first encounter with the internet was when I was about 10 or 11 years old and was on a twelve-inch Macintosh screen. The size of the computer screen has always been a great helper of mine because I am blind as a bat. As I’m looking at this screen, I decided I would like to find some cheat codes for the best computer game ever invented, The Sims. At the time, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox wasn’t invented; instead, I had to rely on Netscape Navigator. Netscape was pretty cool because it had the helm of a ship as part of its logo, and while waiting on the page to load, a shooting star would race across the top to the “N” that completed the logo. Before I was able to reach this part, I had to sit through what seemed like two minutes of torture.
Whoever invented dialup should literally shoot themselves twice in the head. It was a painful screech along with the sound of an unavailable TV channel that was shown by a white screen and a lot of black dots dancing all over the place, as if there were a million ants in your TV. Although today we have high-speed internet provided through cable that comes with no sound. I will always remember my first time using dialup. Finally, the screech along with the TV sound came to end, and here I was looking at a white screen with a blank bar at the top and a mini magnifying glass at the far right of the bar. My friend and fellow Sims player told me about a website that I could go to and find all the cheat codes I could ever dream of. I pulled out the little yellow sticky note that I had written the website on and began to type. After typing the “m” in “com” I pressed the enter key and waited impatiently for about 45 seconds. Finally, it was in front of me as my friend had promised and I was amazed.
It was if I had entered a foreign land. The entire computer had turned into gold, and I grew a pair of wings. I literally felt that life couldn’t possibly get any better than this. I could access all the cheat codes at the click of a button. Who had ever heard of such a thing? I used to think that I lived like the Flintstones, and anyone who had a computer with the internet was living like the Jetsons. My life changed that very day and I can’t complain. The world that we live in has been made around computers and especially the internet. I still have some of my old ways that are seen as a lost art today. Making a card for someone on Christmas holds much more value than an email that says Merry Christmas with Santa Clause mooning you with his rosy cheeks.
Attempting to summarize the way I felt at the time is a hard task. I went through a mix of emotions. At first I felt as Bush did in that technology is the future and that it would make life easier as we know it. On the other hand, I felt like Hawthorne, that it was voodoo in the sense that it was new and growing so fast. It was almost a drug in the sense that it is addicting. People would forget that you can pick up a phone and call someone rather than emailing them. My first encounter with the internet was simply amazing to sum up the entire experience in one word and that is because I could have all the money I wanted on The Sims now that I had the cheat code.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Secrets, They're no fun Unless...
Secret Societies such as free masons and others claim that they hold "knowledge" that no one else knows. What could that possibly be???
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