Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual world is still a new innovation for our world. Virtual world were recently created by companies solely to make profit out of it. Though, it also changed some people's lives and the way they behave. The virtual world is constantly evolving and changing, trying to adapt to many new sectors of people lives. It still hasn't fully developed to all parts of a human's life yet.

Virtual world has changed the way children grow up nowadays compared to our times. In the Forbes article "After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?" written by Diane Mehta, talks about how virtual world changed our lives. One great example she wrote about was "But Minecraft is a virtual world. It’s digital LEGOs if you will, but it’s a space for kids to exercise their imagination and to connect with others to also want to build and create things." It was changed how kids will grow up from here on out. Up until now, children were only limited to building legos from their imaginations with limited resources. But with Minecraft, children can now have more creativity since there's no limitations on what they can build or anywhere they can build it at. They can destroy or build pieces from outer space and so forth instead of just having limited pieces that can only build from the floor to the top. Minecraft provides creativity for children while they are growing up, might also provide innovation for children when they get older. There's actually a lot of benefits for the children, the only negative thing about it probably is that kids may spend too much time on it instead of studying.

Virtual worlds has not only changed the way children lives, it will soon also change the way employees will interact with one another that are further apart from different part of the world. For instance the article "IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life’" written by Ed Frauenheim, talks about how second life world changes the way modern companies will soon interact with one another and shows how there's going to be a lot of great benefits from it. Taken from the article “New IBM employees separated by thousands of miles will be able to mingle, interact and share ideas in the virtual world before their first day on the job,”" said by Ted Hoff, talks how it benefit IBM greatly. Instead of wasting a lot of money on traveling expenses, employees can now just meet up with each other in virtual world before making crucial traveling expensive meetings. Employees can now understand with one another before actually meeting up together in person. They are able to share ideas faster and probably give them more creativity since they are in a new environment. Though, there's some negative effects of using second world/virtual world for employees. Hackers can hack into the virtual world and pose as an employee and ask other employees for personal information that can hack the company itself which can result in big troubles. Virtual worlds are not security proof yet since it's still a new technology innovation.

I think the future of virtual world will greatly changed. We are still only at the beginning process of it, so there's still a lot of things to be added onto the virtual world. It has changed the way people live such as children growing up. It also foster creativity in some ways. Sometimes people can behave another way online that they wouldn't of behave in person. I think the future of the virtual worlds will surely capture a lot of different parts of the markets/people's lives. I think it will greatly foster new innovations due to the creativity they gained from experience.