As the title suggests, we going to touch on this "Second Life" phenomenon.

A little background information on second life:

• Opened to the public in 2003, it is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents. Since then, it has grown explosively and is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.
  
• This "world" is a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. You could even find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
  
• Residents can create and retain intellectual property rights in their digital creations, which they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.
• Second Life supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the inworld unit of trade, the Linden™ dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden dollar exchanges.

So we can see this is an exact replicate of the real world, only "better" because we can teleport and fly through places (how freaking convenient eh!). You can do everything as you would in the real world with your avatar/alter ego, which basically means you can be how u imagine yourself to be, just like in the movie, Matrix (hell cool!). Commercially, companies are building virtual stores for online shopping, market research, product placements and such. And what we learn about in class last week, its education potential, how you can learn a new language from someone and its seemingly infinite possibilities to engage students on a different and virtual level. Now now, it feels that i could go on and on about its cool features

BUT

will being too engaged in a virtual world like second life results in social isolation, hence no life.
People getting too dependent and addicted on their virtual life is a real possibility. As a social media, it can improve and help us connect with people on a whole new level but if we get too engrossed in it and lose track of ourselves, we might risk finding ourselves in a precarious position of social isolation.

So like the meaning of the word "replicate" suggests, this "copy" of our real world is still jus a copy (inferior, if i dare say). I believe as human beings, we still need the personal and physical aspects in social interaction. So take all things in moderation, that should be a good guide in your life and virtual life.


on a side note:
HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR 2009 people :) its CNY and i cant believe i'm here blogging for school, what a freaking drag!!! Plus i tried decorating this space with a new blogskin but its failing for no good reasons. To all buffalos, enjoy the week-long break.

PAAAAAARRRTY!!

Internet

I am sure the internet has touched our lives in one way or another. This powerful medium that had allowed us to seek and share information, social network with people of the same interest and connect people in ways conventional media could not have achieved and all the wonderful devices that had come along with the internet which has convenience much of our lives. However, just how much of its history do we really know?

To put it briefly, Internet first began as an project name ARPANET under the Advanced Research Project Agency of the U.S Dept of Defense in 1962. ARPANET linked the Stanford Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Utah and University of California, Los Angeles in 1969.
Thus, what was initially created to be a network system to direct air defense gradually became what is to be the beginning of the internet.

However, the web that we are so familiar with and used for both work and play now only came about around the year 1989. The web was made possible by this man named Tim Berners-Lee who proposed the idea of a hypertext system that will run across the internet on all operating system. This is the beginning of the World Wide Web.


With the changing trends in the use of web technology and design, known as web 2.0, the development and evolution of the web will be an exciting one. Let's all anticipate the next big prospect to be introduce to the world. After all these social networking sites, wikis, video sharing sites and blogs, we will be wanting more.