Is virtual life too much like real life?
p2pnet news | Off Topic:- Net addiction is more or less the same as extreme disorders such as gambling and sex addiction, or kleptomania, according to an Israeli psychiatrist quoted in Physorg.
Are things really that bad?
And if they are, should there be an e-rehab center, wonder Hermione and the other characters in Leah Archibald’s hilarious IT Gumbo cartooon strip on the right?
First, Second Life’s Anshe Chung, a Chinese lady whose real name is Ailin Graef and who’s currently a German citizen and whose Anshe Chung Studios billed itself as ‘Your global leader in virtual real estate,’ takes part in a virtualn CNET interview only to be “bombarded by flying animated penises and modified images of Graef holding a unrealistically large penis,” as the Wikipedia described it at the time.
Then ARD, Germany`s Channel One, says it’s discovered “child pornography in the virtual world of Second Life”.
Moving right along, Second Life decides virtual casinos and the like could be dangerous.
Then we learn terrorists just love it as a virtual training ground.
Next, “recent collapse of Ginko Financial, a ‘virtual investment bank’ in Second Life, has spurred calls for more oversight, transparency and accountability, especially when it comes to business practices in the metaverse,” says Wired.
It’s not all bad, of course
John von Seggern and J. LeRoy have launched a Second Life expedition to investigate its music scene.
IBM sales representatives in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia will from now staff the company’s virtual Business Center in Second Life, says Reuters.
And a virtual Tokyo will open on Friday, “giving people – or at least their alter egos in the fictional world of Second Life – a chance to explore its pop culture from their computers,” says the Sydney Morning Herald, adding:
“For the opening day, Virtual Tokyo will offer a cyber athletics competition, one day before the real-life world athletics championships get underway in Japan’s second metropolis Osaka.”
Thus, virtual life goes on.
Meanwhile, is an e-rehab on the way? 
Also See:
IT Gumbo – Virtual World becoming more like crappy real world, August 22, 2007
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August 24th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
I’ve been looking at this topic from the other side of the looking glass for nearly a year now. I submit that FIN 140 Q Election, IBs, private equity LBO deals, ABX hedging, ABCP and other games that highly paid guys like escaped particle-physicist Quants play with real bullets are *way* too much like first-person-shooter fantasy games. Heck, Ken in Chicago won around 1.2 giga-bucks of *real money* doing this, just in 2006! If that doesn’t disconnect you from the ground I don’t know what will. A week ago last Thursday ABCP seized up in Canada and the Prime Minister himself had to take time to calm everyone down. Now a Quebec credit union is leading a bailout of German banks, where regulators are even speaking “… 1931 …” in hushed tones. I’m sitting down to breakfast and reading the same stuff in the editorial that I posted on our blog the previous night. I wish more people in the gaming community would put their heads up and have a look at Life 1.0, it’s getting pretty weird out here.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
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