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February 07, 2007
Seminar on the virtual worlds
On February 1st the Eudoxa policy study Reality of virtual life- The first generation was presented at a seminar held at Wennergren Center in Stockholm.
The author of the report, Alexander Kanaev, discussing with Henrik Hansson of Stockholm University
Dr. Kanaev during his presentation speech, explaining the social implications of multi-player online games (MMOG).
Ana Valdés, writer and social anthropologist, commented on the study. She both commented on the immense opportunities offered by virtual worlds, but Valdés also warned that particularly the virtual world Second Life is currently being hyped.
It remains to be seen if the company maintaining the virtual world, Linden Labs, will be able to accomodate the influx of millions of new users in such short time. Valdés also noted a disconcerting trend that the virtual worlds may become too limited in their scope, and become solely modelled on their real world counterparts. The truly innovative uses, doing things that are not possible off-line, may actually be suppressed.
The seminar was well attended by guests from the media, politics, and the computer game industry. In the discussion following Kanaev's and Valdés' presentations, the audience and the speakers addressed such varied issues such as what political impact the virtual worlds have already made, how taxation will affect the virtual worlds' economies, how old businesses are changing their marketing strategies in order to have an outreach in the virtual worlds and how new social groups and associations are springing into existence thanks to virtual interaction.
Pingat på Intressant.se
Andra bloggar om: politik, Second Life, samhälle, ekonomi, framtiden
Posted by Waldemar at February 7, 2007 09:45 AM