Virtual Life?

How many lives do you have? I have a Second Life (SL)! I’ll show you my pic from SL:

Though I’m standing inside a shop, I look more busy and amazed with things around me! Ok, take a look at this pic now:

I’m dancing with Jo! Who’s Jo?

Jo is 3 weeks old (in SL), which is considerably more than mine- 8hrs! I see unique things in SL and was trying to know what’s more than 3D and avtaars here..Charming Jo explained,”you can chat, dance, fly and you can be someone you thought you wanted to be”. hmm…Interesting!

Jo couldn’t clear the litmus test and she admitted that she’s from England and is 45 yrs old, though looks incredibly young in the pic above. Also, she loves to be herself, has similar behaviours in SL as in real life and is open to meet people. After a long and boring day at job, SL helps her to relax and she likes to meet new people there. Moreover, she said that she’s going to visit Lake District today.

My test fails: Jo doesn’t want any connection in Real Life (RL -as she said) and refused to give her identity on FaceBook. Hmm..both are Social Networking Sites (SNS), but this is strange! True..

I’m confused. I can say that she was ready to give intimate informations, without disclosing her identity. Either this new culture is different, or it is so real that I am still not ready to believe it.

Let’s think what happens in RL. Let’s say, I meet a stranger and I’m nice and catch up fast, but the person is not ready to give any close information, than what is known from the top. Here, it’s the opposite. I’m not even sure whether Jo is going to see this beautiful scene of “Herdwick grazing above Thirlmere”

So what exactly is SL?

Everything sounded exactly as in movies. It involved drama, action, songs, emotions, shopping, gaming, avtaars, hi-fi technologies, 3D world- where YOU can CREATE what YOU want. I should say I had a good experience in SL.

Can you smell coffee in virtual world?

This was my ’status message’ in GTalk & FaceBook since last 2 days. I can hear music and do some jargons with avtaars and may be make cross cultural teams sit together and discuss new ideas. But, can I really smell the fresh grass and feel the drops of rain? Is it really any different than 3D video games?

How attached are we with our virutal lives?
I believe it’s not completely black or white but somewhere in between. A good friend of mine keeps in touch with help of GTalk and she said that, “Whatever you say, I assume it to be real”.

Are we simply falling for seductive technologies and have forgotten to look beyond?
I’ve seen people video chatting and they behave to be different than they really are. My friend will never be ableto discover what I’m doing on phone, lest I tell the truth! There has been a sudden increase in the way technologies have affected our behaviors and I see an explosion in the number of researches in my UNI on Human Computer Interation (HCI).

I love Real Life.
This is because I can have everything I might need and I can still think beyond Second Life. I can feel physical, meta-physical and beyond.. I can be humane! Though I can explain with theories that SL will take some time to catch up, I’d love my readers to pour their comments on Virtual Life..Please

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