Welcome to Naqeeb Madhani's Blog: Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual reality is becoming the new norm as people portray multiple characters within themselves. The social networking sites such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, etc. display a great example of people having multiple identities. Virtual reality is another platform where a person can be who they would like to be seen as. "For more than two years the channel has been building a collection of Second Life-style virtual reality Web sites with the goal of competing with popular two-dimensional social networks like MySpace and Facebook. It’s a bet that the future of online interaction won’t be built on flat, static Web pages but rather in traversable 3-D spaces." Virtual reality is just another place to interact with the outside world from a different standpoint.

Virtual reality has some pros and cons which can be pointed out in a heartbeat. One benefit is that you can use it for interactive purposes in different viable settings. For example, "A virtual depiction of the Rayburn House Office Building meeting room was projected on television screens on the wall, so that real-world attendees could look at the small virtual crowd that logged on for the event." This type of interaction can help save time and money of travel for business heads. One negative of virtual reality is that it affects our everyday behavior. This is proven with a study done by Gunwoo Yoon. The study shows that even 5 minutes of virtual experience can influence your behavior and thinking. The study made people play virtual based video games and they were given different avatars: hero, villain, or circle (neutral). "Then, in a presumably unrelated study, they participated in a blind taste test. They were asked to taste and then give either chocolate or chilli sauce to a future participant." The results provided were shocking to me. People who portrayed the character of hero poured more chocolate in comparison to the amount of chili sauce. On the other hand, people who were villains chose to pick chill sauce more often for the future participants. These are just some positives and negatives in regards to virtual reality.

Virtual reality can help foster creativity because whole idea of virtual reality is that it is imaginative. One can dream of doing something and can make it happen in the second life. It encourages people to dream and think outside the box. It boosts your brain to take actions of a very different level which can be helpful for the future of this world.

In the future, Virtual reality is a huge step into the new media platform. The idea of second life has been lingering around for years, but needs a reboot for a steady platform to make it an essential part of everyday life. Samsung has created a virtual reality set which starts off a trend to play video game in an imaginative form. This is the beginning and I believe that many changes into the virtual reality are going to be valued at a high stake.