Today in the tutorial we ventured into the 3D world known as activeworlds, it is the precursor to second life but now is a bit dead, not many people hanging out there. It can be found http://www.activeworlds.com/. I have never used a 3D sight before and I have wanted to see what they are like but having been there and done it, and to be honest I thought it was a bit cool in the fact it's sort of like a game and you can create these people and live these lives, but I got bored fairly quickly with it. There's so many people in these worlds doing their own thing its hard to make connections in order to talk too and interact with them, and I'm not a person that feel the need to meet people on the web. I got to the point where I couldn't really see the point in it and wanted to leave. To me its like a game that takes to long to load and is a bit slow, I couldn't be in world for too long.
Having said this, I have on occasion used MSN, a socialising program that allows for instant messaging. This is a good format for those that can not see each other and that can not go out for coffee and catch up face to face with their friends. In some cases internet access is cheaper than a long call and in many cases much cheaper than long distance and international calls. So using MSN, you can talk instantly by writing messages, it allows for groups of people and its all about the conversation. It allows for students to chat and not annoy parents by tying up the phone lines.
In our lecture we watched a 4 corners report on a interactive world called second life, a place where you can create a life and using real money that is transferred into life money you can make purchases and sell products. Anything from paying for a new face to buying water front property. There is speculation in the future we would be logging onto these 3D worlds and using them as search engines and making purchases from amazon, ebay and other internet stores. My problem with this is, why bother going through all the hassle of creating a avatar (your in world persona) and then finding a search engine, searching and then getting to where you want to be, to find a journal will you have to find the in world library and search there. Or would it be easier to log into your computer a few clicks and you are at your search engine of choice and finding what you are looking for.
That's obviously my opinion and I don't want to insult anyone that is all for this kind of virtual being as this has been a desire of many people from the beginning of the concept of the internet. But for me personally I would rather go shopping for myself than let my avatar have all the fun.
1 comment:
activeworld was so cool aye
Post a Comment