I have been doing a lot of research for my Centra presentation, The Dangers of Virtual Worlds, and I found a few things that really surprised me. I had no idea there were so many real dangers in a make-believe world. I won't go into detail because you'll have to hear it again in November, but I wanted to give you all some links that I found really interesting/disturbing regarding the virtual world, Second Life. It was really hard to create my presentation because I don't exactly agree with the view in which I had to write. I really think virtual worlds are what you make of them and if you have half a brain I think most people can avoid dangerous situations. I found a story online about a woman who was raped in Second Life and tried to sue Linden Labs for allowing something like this to happen. Couldn't she just log off? I think that's taking it a little too far. I mean, I don't really understand what exactly happened to the woman's avatar, but she was in no physical danger herself so how could she be emotionally scarred? It may be that she was a rape victim in real life, but like I said before..why not walk away from the computer? The research for this project was a great experience and I learned some things that really opened my eyes to the dangers of virtual reality. Check out the videos I found, you might be surprised.
Virtual Relationships
Virtual Child Predators
Children & Second Life
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3 comments:
Jennifer, your comment about a right brain leads us to believe that you have developed a sense of internet safety, which is great! However, we cannot assume that everyone thinks the same way we do. This becomes really important when we consider the fact that eLearning deals with every age group and within every age group, we will find people who are more internet savy than others. As we consider e-Learning and the necessary items that we want students to have (digital literacy, internet safety, web-searching strategies, etc.), we need to also make sure that we are teaching these specific skills. Many times we assume that our students know these things, when in fact, it is a very important issue that educators need to address.
Cyber-bullying has become a real and significant problem. Perhaps in this particular case you could make the argument that it is "just a game," but I think the real issue is that she should not have to "just log off." Cyber-bullying is not limited to (and did not even start with) virtual worlds, and it can greatly affect someone who may need or want to spend a lot of time online. When I worked at a public library, I would often get phone calls from an elderly woman who was being bullied online and through email. She was terrified because somebody had apparently gotten some of her information.
Or maybe we do need to simply disconnect more...
I totally agree with Jen that virtual words are exactly what one makes of them for themselves. Personally I am very skeptical and do not buy into the idea of living in an online environment. In my opinion spending time excessively in various online virtual worlds or communities etc. reduces ones capability of real world human interaction.
I head of a very interesting study on a disturbing topic:
A researcher observed the behaviors and talked extensively with pedophiles and found out that they have created an online community of their own, where they interact, share their views, experiences and stories. The research concluded that the ability to interact with others who share the “same interest” makes their actions seem acceptable.
I think that the danger of the online communities and virtual worlds is well present in my example. Before the time of the internet, it was more difficult for wrong-doers such as pedophiles to communicate with anyone about their sick obsession. Now they can anonymously meet in an online environment to reinforce their behaviors to each other.
Web interactions and online communities can be a great thing, but just like anything, it can be abused with terrible consequences. I have a posting where I discuss the effect of living in the fallacy of online environments, if anyone is interested in reading it. It can be found on the OCD blog under tag Finland.
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