« Throw a Party for RSS! | Main | Leaving Las Vegas »
The Reality Behind the Virtual
By Laura Thomas, ABC | May 8th, 2008
My latest post on Direct2Dell about speaking at the vBusiness Expo held inside Second Life includes a photo of my avatar at the podium while I was presenting. That photo elicited the comment of “nice legs” from one friend which I took totally as a compliment - no offense, because he’s a good friend and, hey, as you can see here Pyrrha does have nice legs!
But, on this blog I thought I’d share a little bit of the reality behind the virtual reality that image captures. I actually tried to use my new Flip video camera to tape myself while I was speaking at the vBusiness Expo from the comfort of my living room couch. I’m sure friends who’ve seen me twitter about purchasing it have been waiting to see some actual video come from it. Sadly, however, I didn’t purchase a tripod for it, so my attempt to tape from the top of the couch didn’t quite get the right angle for you to see all of the real me. So, here’s just a snapshot from it to give you a little behind-the-scenes look at what Pyrrha Dell’s alter ego (me) looked like during the presentation. No, didn’t get my short legs in the pic for you to compare to Pyrrha’s.
This conference was a prime example of the opportunity virtual worlds provide to bring people together across geographies without ever leaving home.
Still thinking virtual worlds are a fad or something just “for the kids”? You might check out my new article over on Media Bullseye, as well as the Direct2Dell post.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am
What’s interesting to me about the “kids’ stuff” dismissals: it’s connected to what I think of as a gross lack of historical knowledge and imagination.
Yes, I’m biased in this b/c I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in history, but here’s my point: over and over and OVER across technology history, new technologies have been dismissed as “just for entertainment” or “just for hobbyists” or, in general, as fluff.
Until people get their hands on them. Until those crazy kids (and entrepreneurs, and corporations, and governments, etc.) start noodling with them. It’s happened with films, automobiles, mechanical and magnetic recorded media, television, 4-track recording, handheld video, fax machines, landline telephones, cellular telephones . . .
Oh yeah, and with the Internet.
Give smart people something powerful to play with and they’ll come up with smart, powerful ways to use it — including ways far afield from the original intended use. And I say hallelujah for it.