Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

New media has made dramatic steps into our lives that it is seen everywhere we go and turn around. In our society, the role of a medium has essentially played an important role that even the current president used it as a tool to connect with us throughout last year's presidential campaign until he caught everyone's attention and won their votes. Technology has accommodated many people but not limited to the entertainment industry, education, politics, and businesses. This new technological approach has built in a nest where it is developed in order to better serve the needs of the people. Another form of new media is the virtual worldl.

A virtual world is a computer-simulated environment in which many people can interact with others via avatars, a representation of himself/herself. Created and played by real people, this modeled world is almost like a representation of reality via a digital world. The use of virtual world can extend from a simple diversion to even business and professional-related uses. Major corporations have turned to virtual world as they have used other new media such as social networks and wikis. I never knew that virtual worlds can be used to help train potential employees and personnel to properly prepare them into their respective job positions. For example, a personnel can use the virtual world as a practice to market a certain product to clients. Although this is a faux practice, it makes the user notice his or her mistakes as others critique their presentation and notify them what they are lacking and need to improve. This helps employees to come up with a different approach to the promotion in order to appear more convincing and effective in front of the clients. Also, the employees can make as much mistakes as they can and repeat the process over and over again to develop their skills and to strengthen their representation of themselves and the product they are trying to sell to the respective clients. Virtual worlds offer an environment where people can build up their confidence and skills at little cost (time). In the article "IBM Learning Programs Get a 'Second Life,'" "[New IBM employees] can learn real-life working skills such as signing up for benefits, developing code as part of a global team, and ramping up sales skills before they meet with IBM clients” (Frauenheim) as stated by IBM vice president Ted Hoff. The virtual world or in this case, second life, helps its users to improve their communication skills and properly integrate it into their workplace and their lives. Because other people also suffer from low self-esteem and cannot speak to others, the cyber world will help them converse with others with the representation in their avatars, which can lead to an improvement in their social lives while their second lives foster interactive skills.

As much as there is such an advantageous side to virtual worlds, there are also downsides to it. Some people dedicate most of their time to playing their second lives and almost not living their primary lives to the point that this virtual world is almost replacing their real lives. Also, another important dark side to this medium as mentioned last lecture class is that now the military and the army are reverting to virtual worlds to train potential soldiers to fight in a virtual battlefield against game experts in order to prepare them to the real combat zone. Through this virtual world, young soldier learn how to shoot and kill people, the skills in which they need to foster before being launched in a blitz. Although this is helping the military and the army to cultivate their scouts into disciplined and skilled soldiers, this is also promoting the idea that killing is widely conventional and not evil as it conditions those players (who are still in their youth) this notion. Therefore, the representation of virtual worlds in this way will impact the way of thinking of our future generations and will become a bad role model for these children.

Frauenheim, Ed. "IBM Learning Programs Get a ‘Second Life'". Workforce Management. October 19, 2009 http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/24/61/08.html.