MoDeLing ReaLiTy wiTh VirTuaL WoRLds

    Virtual World and social life is playing a very significant part in our lives. Some people put their lives on Facebook and update their status every hour or so. It’s hard for those people to distinguish the difference between the reality and virtual life. In the article “Social Influence and the Diffusion of User-Created Content”, the author states: “We identify and model social influence based on the change in adoption rate following the actions of one’s friends and find that the social network plays a significant role in the adoption of content.” He means that we as the society are influenced by virtual world and get manipulated by others. Later on the authors make a more detailed example to prove their point: “Social network information has successfully been used, for example, to predict whether a customer will sign up for a new calling plan once one of their phone contacts does the same [10]. The photos we view and the stories we “Digg”are often the ones we observed our friends consuming [13,14]. LiveJournal bloggers are more likely to join a group that many of their friends joined, especially if those friends belong to the same clique [2]. Blogs are likely to link to content that other blogs have linked to [27].” They are many advantages as well as disadvantages of that. First, in our busy lives sometimes we don’t have time to call or see our friends as often as we would like to, and by using social network, we can say “hi” and catch up with all of them in 5 minutes each day. It is also good for businesses to grow their networks and advertise through other “friends”. The bad thing is that we can get easily addicted and if that happens, that can be life consuming and energy taking experience.

          By using virtual worlds, we can enhance our creativity and get inspired. We can view galleries, shows, concerts, learn how to play guitar on the internet, etc. For those who are too busy to travel, we can visit any place in the world just by typing it in the “google” search engine. In Dave Itzkoff’s article: “I’ve Been in That Club, Just Not in Real Life” he writes: “Despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side (vles.com), a three-dimensional, Internet-based social network fastidiously modeled on a small but influential swath of Manhattan real estate.” We can create new ideas, and there are websites where we can plug in a photo of ourselves and imagine how we would look like for instance in different hair color or style. We can design our own shoes or play intellectual games online. There are so many interesting things to do online that it is very likely that in the future we will do almost everything online, without the necessity of leaving the house. Now, we can even make bank deposits over the phone with a snap of a picture. Society is merging into the direction where computers are playing such a significant role, that who knows if in ten years we will need human help anymore. I hope that won’t happen.