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.

Politics and Social Media

Social media, namely Youtube has been a wonderful place for eleven year olds to share videos of them hitting their friends in the junk for several years now, and it's been a great success. One day, politicians thought that this would be a great possibility to be able to reach out to the younger voters, by posting videos online tailored to getting their votes.

Politicians making official posts on YouTube was an interesting step, because generally, political videos prior to this generally attacked Zionism, the CIA or the Americans adopting the gold standard, so you can see what these pollies are up against.

US President Barack Obama now has his own YouTube channel, which he championed during the run up toward the 2008 elections, saw him gain prestige as having a connection to the younger voter. Australian Prime minister Kevin Rudd has also made several YouTube addresses, which are sensationally hard to find, due to the possibly thousand to one parody ratio. If I didn't spend ten minutes actually looking for Mr. Rudd's own channel because i already knew he had one, I would have thought that his only YouTube penetration was eating his own earwax, and praising the communists in a shady re-subtitled video.

So is the online exposure actually worth the millions of parodies you're bound to receive? I'm not really sure about that. Being from the targeted demographic (A young, left leaning voter) I can tell you that I haven't watched Rudds' online videos, and nor could I give a damn. The videos are long, and full of obvious word turning. I'd much rather spend my time on YouTube watching someone get hit in the junk with a steamboat named Ivan the Mystical lay about.

There are some benefits to the online exposure however. There is indeed a large chunk of young voters that haven't had their attention spans destroyed by the mass media who will find these videos interesting and enlightening, and it is possible you could see a voter change in the polls due to this. However the inherent risks pose a serious risk to countering the trend of people actually watching the online posts. Posting video and audio online is literally GIVING that footage and sound to parody makers. they don't even have to try to get a hold of the footage anymore, because they can simply use a program to download it off YouTube. Turning it into mixes, completely removing context, anything they want, is possible with supplied footage from the politician himself. It's a considerable risk to take, when reputation in the politics game is everything.

Good parodies can be spawned however. Take a look at Obama Girl, a scripted video with an attractive young woman expressing her love and affection for Obama all the way through the campaign towards Obama's election. This young, intelligent girl no doubt had an effect on young male democratic voters, because let's face it. Most young men will do almost anything for a pretty face.

Produsage: the wonders of "Kid falls over lolol remix remix remix of a remix dubstep trance techno remix"

Produsage can be a wonderful thing. It allows a user to take a great piece of media, be it a film, a picture or even concept such as Star Wars, and then build on it in different ways than what the original creator had imagined. The Star Wars film series has managed to develop and blossom far beyond the scope of George Lucas thanks to the viewers at home writing their own fan fiction within the universe, and even making their own films (such as the hilarious and only slightly on topic: star wars kid)
This concept can be a pretty darn good idea when it comes down to it. A film gets released and is exposed to its target audience, such as the film "Downfall" being released to Germans, and the world war two minded. A hilarious youtuber then got their hands on a section of the film where Hitler has a hissy fit, and then subtitles about how much the new Halo game sucked. The films exposure has now exploded thanks to curious youtubers wondering what exactly it is that curious mustached fellow was saying to begin with.
So, old ideas are being reenergized and reused, and at the same time, people without access to a full film studio or publisher, are able to pimp their own creative additions to the already existing universes.

Which is totally awesome, until somebody manages to MAKE SEINFELD NOT FUNNY AND SERIOUS AND SAD, thank you very much, CollegeHumor.com.
Wikipedia is also a great example of produsage. The original content is there: The event, and information is slowly added and improved with the more people that visit the page that have worthy information. However, this free exchange of ideas and information can also lead to data being smudged with spam or bogus data. For instance, I knew a person who altered every word "Jew" in the Mountain Jews webpage, to "Dew" which to a high school kid was positively hilarious. A wonderful example of produsage.

Sex in Cyberspace AKA:"You Don't Look A Thing Like Your Picture."

Second Life and the second dimension

Imagine a society of which you really have no physical contact with. A society literally embedded throughout the globe, where although they feel as though they’re best friends, they don’t even know who each other really are? Welcome to Second Life, an online computer game allowing folk to disconnect from their real lives, with their 40 hour a week jobs, bills, illness, children and possibly undesirable physical appearance, to jump into a virtual reality in which they control the tools to make themselves whoever they want to be, to create their own reality around them.

But really, could second life ever be considered reality? I think that Second Life should be considered as a form of reality. Although you are controlling your “avatar” merely through fingers on a keyboard, there is a level of shared experiences which makes Second Life’s experiences undeniably real. Chatting to friends in coffee houses, playing games, and flying through the air: these are fake experiences that people are discovering together. And when several million people are coming together every day to experience it, clearly, their reality is transcending far beyond simply “Playing a computer game”. These players are socializing, exploring, chatting, laughing and maybe even loving. How could all of these emotions ever be considered fake?

As Meadows argued, the fact that people in these virtual worlds such as Second Life are building things, using them, trading them and discussing them and other people in the game are seeing that object to and placing value on it, clearly there is an aspect of reality in it. These peoples’ shared experiences have created a reality of their own outside of the scope of the real world, and some may say that this fantastic. Think about what the real world is like: worldwide famine, disgusting wars, racism, hate, anger and murder. Wouldn’t you just like to fly away from it all? Well, in Second life, you can.


People have done some pretty amazing things within Virtual Worlds. Marriages have blossomed, ideas have boomed, and people have that ultimate feeling of discovery from within their living rooms. You, as a citizen of the cyber world, can write your own destiny.

This is definitely where the appeal comes from. This new reality must have come to pass from people who are so incredibly unhappy with their own personal lives that they seek to colonize a plane of virtual existence that holds no bias against them, not even the bias of being born a specific colour. By seeking freedom from their own lives, it’s possible that these men and women have created a utopia in which you can escape the real world’s dystopia, and by experiencing it together, they have created a shared reality that could be argued to be as real as the world around you right now.

So I say, go for it. Explore the Virtual Worlds, colonize and good luck!