what do you prefer?

i have a preference for the real but who is to say what is real or not.

Information is out

I have placed posters and flyers around my university as well as other places.
Hopefully you've seen them and that's why your here.
Please leave comments about the topic of virtual reality addiction, and have a look through the articles on this blog.
Tell me what you think.
Thank you

A story about a tree

Here is a link to a story about how powerful virtual reality games can be.

http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/essay1.shtml

NPR: a second life to live

This is a link to an american news site. It contains a news cast where a technical expert talks through what is happening in Second Life, and just generally gives information to people that don't know much about the phenomenon.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6375226

This is a similar report, but this one concentrates more on the growing expansion of Virtual Reality:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6581268

Are you addicted?

Are you or do you know anyone that is "addicted" to any kind of Virtual Reality?
If so please let me know by leaving a comment.

Addicted to Second Life?

I have been going through some extreme SL withdrawals…. EEEK! Work load and family commitments, otherwise known as Real Life (RL) have been impeding my access to SL. So, rather than cry a river about what I’m missing, thought I’d get a chuckle while I think about it. So here we go - the signs and symptoms of extreme Second Life addiction:

1. You not only refer to Second Life as SL, but your normal everyday life is now referred to as RL (Real Life) and, people look at you funny because you forget that not everyone is into SL.
2. You are out for a drive and you want to pan your camera to see everything around you but quickly realize that you neck doesn’t quite crank that way and now must go to see the chiropractor for some treatments.
3. You look in your purse (or man purse) to check out your inventory and wonder what attachments you have in there that you need for the day. Same goes for looking for clothes in your closet. No ordinary objects are “objects” anymore - they are “inventory.”
4. You go to the hairdresser for a new hairdo, decide you don’t like it, and then realize you can’t just get another hairstyle off the rack. Guess you should have thought of that before you asked the hairdresser for that mohawk haircut.
5. You dream in technicolor and those dreams are in in SL style, and when it’s a nightmare, your dream crashes.
6. You need to get from here to there very quickly and find yourself looking for the “Teleport button.”
7. While engaging in RL conversations, you find yourself having another dialog occuring simultaneously that incorporates what your SL character would say.
8. You try to run SL on a laptop as much as possible so that the need for interruptions is lessened - like bathroom breaks - just unplug, pick up, sit back down, and keep typing. Alternatively, you start to consider that a diaper might be the best solution to your problem.
9. You think that skinny dipping in SL is the next best thing to chocolate cake, and plan your day around getting there to do it.
10. You look at objects, counting prims, check via edit if you counted them right, and try to figure out how to make the same object using less prims. (Daniel Regenbogen)
11. If english isn’t your native language: you start talking english outside of SL. (Daniel Regenbogen)
12. Instead of walking towards something until it is in arm’s reach to pick it up, you just stretch out your arm from the other side of the room, Luke Skywalker style, waiting for the white line to magically appear attaching your outstretched fingers to the object. If it takes more than five seconds for you to realize your mistake, your level of addiction may be more serious than you first thought! (Shakespeare Seuss)
13. When Halloween ad carnival are the only 2 days you think people look real, you might just have an Second life Addition’s. (Duncan Rust)
14. When you go to a furniture shop, and ask the sales man/woman to show you several Kama Sutra positions in plain public ‘just to try out the pose balls’ you might have a bit of an Second life addiction. (Duncan Rust)
15. When you start to dance in a circle in the middle of the floor, and expect money for it, you might be Second Life addicted. (Duncan Rust)
16. You are addicted to SL if you fear that your car will sink into the ground as soon as you pass the city limit. (Laetizia)
17. You are addicted to SL if you try to right-click on your car to ‘Drive!’ (Laetizia)
18. You are (and this really happened to me) addicted to SL if you see news on TV about a horrible place like North Korea and think: “That would make a fascinating sim!” (Laetizia)
19. You are addicted to SL if you are walking with friends in the campus and thinking that right at the moment someone is watching you and your friends from above and sees you as small green points on the ground. (Mirelle Masala)
20. You are addicted to SL if you see a stranger in a store who looks nice and you feel the urge to right click on them and select “Add Friend.” (Halo Askew/Azeri Zenovka)
21. You are addicted to SL if you think you can fly without taking drugs (Duncan Rust)

This is a real life picture of the couple featured in the article below.