Virtual reality - forever more prospects of you forgetting about your crummy job.

Online massively multiplayer gaming has only started to penetrate the massive field of its potential. Second like has allowed people to become whatever and whoever they want in a world without their usual worries such as financial security or fear of their own actions, so how could this possibly be improved?

The graphical interface systems for Second Life are aging quite rapidly, and movement is also extremely lag affected. As the years move forward, access to extremely high grade visual game performance will mean that people searching for a virtual world hardly need to remember that there is anything 'virtual' about it, i mean take a look at what we can do with current technology within games:The image on the left is a real life picture taken, and the image to the write is the computer generated version. Do take note, that this is not a computer art piece, that is a gaming engine.

Several years down the track, when a majority of internet users have access to super fast internet systems such as ADSL2+, there is absolutely no telling as to what couldn't be done within these games. Games so real that you actually forget you're playing them. Is this where the world is heading? with people becoming increasingly unhappy with their jobs and many people's access to a full lively life (take a look at many Chinese people confined to a single room apartment where they may live the rest of their lives) this idea of virtual freedom may even become more popular than ever, to the point where the virtual economy rivals the power of the dollar.

Could this secondary reality benefit the world? I think so. meetings for multinational corporations could be taken virtually, allowing the Tokyo office to sit in a chair next to the Taiwan office. budding adventurers could explore the Yosemite national park when they're on their break at Burger King. Maybe, like has happened before, romantic relationships could be grown and tended to, completely online.

Virtual Reality applications will no doubt dominate the global stage in years to come. With the advent of new interfacing technology such as the Emotiv headset (http://www.emotiv.com/), which allows you to control your computer with your own thoughts and facial expressions, we may see humanity fall into a virtual reality even more real than the matrix. Thanks for reading.

Online documentaries - Skirting Hollywood red tape and giving voice to the crackpots

The regulation free nature of the internet has allowed anyone with a theory about anything to blog about it, write angry posts on message boards, or just simply abuse a Wikipedia page, and this is partially a good thing. Gone are the days where documentary makers had to jump through hoops at publishers for their material to get any form of release to the public, and in are the days where documentary makers can serve their content straight in to the homes of their prospective viewers.

However, this free regulation has also given rise to anyone to be able to produce a documentary and have it published online for viewing, which has also increased the ability for poor quality documentaries to be published onto sites like YouTube with no fact checking occurred throughout the entire process, and let's face it: you could say President Obama is not a US citizen on YouTube and people would believe it as long as you put a sweet music track to it and some special effects. Oh wait, that's already happened: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDIVEfVGLBQ . That's right ladies and gentlemen, 40 odd years ago a birth certificate was faked so that a man could win a democratic election in order to enslave America into a socialist dystopia. UGH.

Seriously though, I suppose this has considerable benefits toward freedom of speech, as everybody's voice can be heard, which in modern day society can be an increasingly hard thing to acquire and see when the topic is hard politics and scandal rather than celebrity makeovers and who's sleeping with Janet Jackson. The ability to actually say what you believe needs to be said, free from the scissors of the editing room and vested interests from rich producers in Hollywood does create the ability for an unedited message to reach the viewers ears. For instance, not quite on topic with documentaries, but still relevant: the footage of Israeli commandos boarding a humanitarian aid ship yesterday was filmed and then uploaded online before the Israeli censors could have their way with it, no doubt ensuring that the world was able to watch what actually happened, rather than what a government wants us to see.

Zeitgeist is an example of a very famous online documentary, which takes a cold hard look at American politics over the past 100 years, and definitely would not have ever been supported by a Hollywood style publisher. It attacks the government for intentional loss of life, state terrorism and even suggests that the US government had a hand in the September 11th attacks. But is it fact? Without appropriate fact checking, no one knows, and this is the perfect example of why anything you read on the internet you need to find a supporting source for.

Mobile phones and the bigger picture

Mobile phones are a pretty amazing piece of technology. Twenty years ago we were mystified by the idea that these things could play such complex games like snake on such a small machine, whereas in the year 2010 a teenager doesn't even need to blink twice at the prospect of a motion sensing flight simulation game on their shiny little iPhone. However, will the mobile phone become the dominant screen of the 21st century? Hardly likely.

Although the expansion of technology to smart phones and the mobile suites of applications that many phones can provide these days, mobile phones are still restricted in the notion that their screens are tiny, and their keyboards are small. You'd be pushing it if you wanted to do your homework on it, take notes in class or perhaps write a blog post, and I'm damn sure you'd get eye and finger cramp at the same time.

Paul Levinson was also correct when he discussed the amazing price of new mobile technology. Off the shelf, iPhones' demand at least $850 brand new depending on where you buy it. Putting that in to perspective, A high end computer gaming system wants roughly the same price, and offers even more than 8 times the computing power of the iPhone.

However, I still must express how extremely useful this new technology can be. Stuck in an argument about the type of mint George drops into a patient during surgery in the famous show Seinfeld, and away from a computer terminal to be able to bring fact in to the equation, my hand only had to retire to my pocket so that I could do a quick two minute search to find the answer, and we all know how very addictive Facebook can be when you're pretending to work, or do your homework.

While I do not argue with the fact that the mobile phone is an immensely popular piece of technology, I do disagree with the notion that it will be the dominant screen of the twenty-first century. Amazing for communication and consuming media, there still lays a line between writing on your phone and your computer, or watching a movie comfortably on your couch in front of a screen larger than your palm.