the eighth blog

Second Life: How it influences human life

       According to the article—Second Life and The Sacred: Islamic Space in a Virtual World, Krystina Derrickson describes the introduction of the second life. “Second Life (SL) is a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), a "vast digital continent, teeming with people”^, a space that is defined, designed, and detailed by its 12,480,281 worldwide users.  It is a space of entertainment, commerce, education, tourism, relaxation, socialization, participation, play; a space put to those uses determined by the choice of its users, vastly interactive and surprisingly, seemingly-concrete. Users are represented in-world by their avatars, representations of the self that are presented as infinitely personalizable, the self's digital emissary.” With the spreading of second life, it has become a part of human life. Its unconsciously influence changes people’s mental world.

         When a person goes into this virtual world, he or she would build an avater, which the character and the looking are similar to the person. Then, when the acater starts his life in the virtual world, many other avaters will come to you and make friends with you. Gradually, the person will adapt into the virtual world. In such a world, people still care about their behavior; whether their behavior is appropriate. Most of the players build their avaters perfectly; such like they would choose the beautiful cloth for their avaters in terms of looking confidence and charming. However, spending too much time on the second life will change the real person’s behavior. Lately, Stanford University, the chief of VHTL laboratory, Jeremy Bailenson expresses a phenomenon based on his study: As long as player using avater to chat over 90 seconds, it is easier to change the player’s behavior after the player’s status is off-line; at least in the short run. This tells us no matter the influence is bad or good, it indeed brings some changes to people.

         We can say that the second life provides a chance to people to re-build the confidence. In the virtual world people can build the avater in their own thinking, which can fill people’s pity in the real world. If a person is a disability, he or she can gain free in the second life; in this case, the second life can makes the person become more active to communicate with others because the person can forget he is a disability provisionally. However, the second life is such an attractive virtual world that people lost themselves in it. Take an example, there is a news told that a couple just have their own baby, because they still addict to the second life and they have their virtual baby on it, as a result, they forget to feed the real baby and the baby die from starving. It is horrible news and indicating that how dangerous that people lost themselves in the virtual world.

          I believe that the first purpose of the second life is to build a space to entertain people, providing a proper way for people to relax. However, it is not being developed maturely, and at this time, it is easy for people to addict it and cannot control themselves, which is bad for human’s body and mental development. Especially for the youth, they do not have a strong mental, which is easier to be changed by the virtual world. Currently, it is better for people to keep some distance from the second life. 

the seventh blog

                   The effects of games on children and youth

                  Children, especially born after 1980s, love to play computer and video games. They often get great satisfaction during playing all kinds of games. Boys like playing action games and role playing games while girls prefer education games. If children can allocate their time properly on playing games, actually, games act as stimulations to their studying. However, if they fail to have good schedule on games, addict to games and even study games, something bad will happen.

                  Many games now become much better on pictures, playability and even make people feel like being in reality. Counter Strike, Call of Duty series, World of Warcraft and StarCraft represent some of the best games in the world. One of the common points of those games is filled with violence. Counter Strike and Call of Duty series are best interactive point and shoot games. StarCraft gives people a chance to develop their strategy about mastering the overall picture. As for World of Warcraft, it is a purely bloody game. The majority victims of playing games are children and youth because they always confuse about fantasy and reality. When they are playing an interactive shooting game, they are experiencing conditioned skill practice. Because children have strong imitate ability, so those conditioned skill practice helped school shooters commit for real violence. It is true that many military schools use point and shoot video games as their real battle training. Although published games may not be as professional as those games used in military schools and many students may not be trained professionally with those games, every time students play the games, to a certain degree, they learn some practical skills and it is very dangerous to others.

                 Not all games are bad to young people. Computer games also acts as a teaching machine. Many good game players are active in solving problems. They are not easily beaten by obstacles and on the contrary, they treat mistakes as opportunities of practice and learning. What is more, if in a game, a team is needed, it is also a good chance to learn leadership, teamwork and how to assign works between group members. A good example of this kind of game is Civilization III. In this game, there are many countries and each country has its unique characteristics. For example, when you choose the Old Babylon, you will discover that its advantage is in technology and the cost of technology and religious building is only half of other nations. When players change regime of the Old Babylon, there is no chaos period. However, you will not appreciate those advantages before you choose other civilizations. Once you use other nations, the differences come. Because each nation has its own advantage, so players must pay more attention to those huge differences in choosing nations. After people play the game, they will learn some useful experiences that may be used in future life.  

                No matter what kind of games children play, they should cope with those games properly. Although games play an important role in and have great effects in youths’ lives, it is better for them to assign proper time on playing games.

        

the sixth blog

                                      The New Media Economy

       Nowadays, the network can be seen as a form of the new media. When combining the network and the economy, there is a great improvement in the economic market. Because of the technology of the network, it provides a widespread platform for business man to interact, communicate and corporate; moreover, the network stimulates working efficiency; and also, the commerce diversity is promoted by the network.

        There is a famous phenomenon called “the long tail”, which is a business problem that makes the business man headache. But now, with the development of the new media, the problem can be improved. In the economic market, there are some head products which gain the most popularity; of course, there also existing some products that cannot gain the public’s attention. For those products, are the long tails in the economic market. What can improve the long tails? There is a way--- the Internet.

        “The long tails” phenomenon is indicated by Chris Andorson. He applies some commerce and economy model, like Amazon, Ebay to show that the long tail can be improved by the new media. In his article, he wrote about an example of two best sellers. Joe Simpson wrote a book about climbing---“Touching the Void” in 1988, after he published it, the book did not sell well. After 10 years, another person called Jon Krakarer wrote “Into thin Air”, which caused the public’s attention and became the best seller. Because both of the two books talk about the climbing experience, the Amazon put the “Touching the Void” as a recommend book aside the “Into Thin Air” and hope reader can realize it. As a result, the reader like “Touching the Void” as Amazon expected, and they order the book from the on-line bookstore. After a year, the demand for “Touching the Void” is much more than “Into Thin Air”.

         This example explains that some less-popular merchandise can be re-sell in the long run. In the long run, nobody can exactly know what the consumer’s need and how to satisfy them. The consumer’s need is diverse, unstable. Take an example for myself. Last year, I saw an Indian movie called “Three Idiots”, it is a great movie and I found the male character’s acting is vivid. Then I bought his other three movies to watch---“Star on the Earth”, “Death Unknown” and “Damage”. They are also meaningful, vivid and thoughtful. As a consumer, I have the experience that when one merchandise appeals to me, I would like to find the relevant because I like it. I think most people have the similar experience; therefore, the business men realize the psychology of consumer, use new media as a tool to re-develop their merchandise and gain the profit.

         In the new economy market, most of cooperating method cannot live without the new media. The new economy needs it to broadcast, exchange and process. Not only the businessmen can take advantage of the high working efficiency of new media, they can also share with its unlimited space resource. Creating more benefits to the public and themselves in a relative low cost and convenient way is what everybody expects. 

The Fifth Blog

                                       Google Earth –Not as Beautiful as It Looks Like

     As multidimensional meta-medium providing geographic information, Google Earth takes advantages of photographic technology, weather report and the Internet community and combines various elements into a vast map. While Google Earth is facilitating social life and actual physical, emotional experiences, it is not as beautiful as we can see.

Seeing pictures of destinations from different point of view using Google Earth is a pleasant business; however, privacy can be losing at the same time. Pictures are taken by the satellites without screened. As a result, personal properties such as lands and houses are easily searched and found. When it comes to military affairs, a tiny piece of information exposure is vital for the country due to the existence of Google Earth. According to The Dong-A Ilbo, a renowned newspaper in Korea, said that in the satellite photographs of Google Earth, air defense bases of the capital Seoul and surrounding area aiming at North Korea are clearly displayed. Although Korea has remonstrated with Google about such leak, there is no such an agreement to deal with the privacy loss.

Another problem Google Earth has to face is about quality and accuracy. It is not as accurate as one would expect it to be owing to various reasons. Symbolization of content and data is not only difficult to construct but also understood differently from person to person, which leads to information bias between makers and receivers. In addition, cost is much more troublesome comparing to symbolization. The source of revenue of Google Earth mainly depends on charged to the non-free version users. In spite of the cost to send a satellite into the space, Google has to pay millions of dollars for human resource to collect information, combine it with pictures, and promote the application. Briefly, symbolization and cost block the way for Google Earth to be more accurate.

The last but not the least, information lag makes Google Earth is not that reliable. World is changing all the time while Google Earth not. In such a situation that some pictures are taken nearly three years ago, little evidence can show that a definitely real world is displayed. To be specific, if a building is razed to the ground, it seems impossible for Google Earth to change the appearance the next minutes at current technology level. Unlike immediate transport of words or photographs using the Internet, it takes time for the changes in reality to be reflected in Google Earth.

Google Earth facilitates an increased range of personal and social actions, an extension of social space( Jakob Linaa Jensen, 2010). It makes a big improvement of simplex web map and creates a multifunctional application including world map system, Global Position System, weather system and so on. Nevertheless, Google Earth is not as beautiful as it looks like. If it aims to be a requisite application for life, these ineluctable issues including loss of privacy, accuracy and information lag must be solved.