Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can be used in almost any capacity that we can think of (and I'm sure even more that we CAN'T think of at the moment). Anything from socialization, learning, training, disaster preparedness simulation, conferences, and even the military can use virtual worlds.

Increasingly, we find virtual worlds such as Second Life being used to create a virtual copy of social situations. This is the case with Naughty Auties, a virtual world for people with autism. As Simon Bignell from the University of Derby noted in a March 28, 2008 CNNhealth.com article entitled iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle Autism with virtual interaction, "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 can also help medical students get more real-life training in simulated environments. As Dr. Ramloll noted in an April 13, 2010 Wall Street Journal article entitled Avatar II: The Hospital, "If nurse-avatars get lost trying to evacuate patients, it's clear the hospital needs better directional signs. If one hallway always gets clogged with virtual gurneys, perhaps administrators should rewrite the evacuation protocol to ease the bottleneck."

Virtual worlds can also cut costs for companies by allowing a more interactive conferencing or training experience, without the expensive costs of travel and accommodations. They can also provide a collaborative simulation for emergency situations within and outside of the government.

This of course does not mean that virtual worlds do not pose issues. This use of technology assumes that everyone has easy access to high-speed internet, which unfortunately is not the case. Additionally, having these virtual worlds now seems to be pointless for me. When we have the capability for TRUE 3D picture that actually places us in the world, walking through as a 1st person, instead of a 2nd person avatar model of ourselves, that is when we can really seek to reap the benefits of it.

We also have to be careful not to become too dependent on the outcomes or reactions in the virtual world in guiding us for how we behave in the real world. Whether situations that play out in a virtual world will unfold in the same manner in the real world will always be open to speculation. As technology becomes more interactive, our programming and modeling will become more and more prone to human error.

This of course won't keep us from "living it up" in the virtual world. Since we are not bound by real world rules, we can be as creative as we'd like. This includes everything from glamorous outfits and expensive cars, to just generally throwing out the rule book and living our virtual world the way we always wanted our real life to be. Perhaps we can all be our own Jackass characters in our virtual worlds.

As it turns out, my dad was on the right path when he said (mind you this was 8-9 years ago) that he'll only switch over to online grocery shopping when he can actually go through the aisles of the virtual supermarket and place them virtually into his shopping cart. Fresh Direct Second Life anyone?