The world may not exist but it can make money appear in your bank account

Since learning about Computer Mediate Communication styles in class I decided to do a little bit of research into their backgrounds. I searched second life and was amazed all the results that came up both from the site and 3rd parties. I even found a blog, which I found really funny that someone is blogging about the application intended for communication itself.

One article I found interesting was a piece on second life from business week. There was an interview conducted for the magazine through second life, which I found interesting because of how it relates to my major. The author of the article interviewed a Chinese teacher from Germany who owns a firm that creates homes for people to buy with the currency, Linden dollars, and has even started a real world company with real world employees. I was astounded to read that her company is worth 250,000 American dollars. Yes you read correctly, she makes money from people buying digitally created homes on digitally created land in an “imaginary” world, and has made a living from it. You may be asking yourself the same thing I thought…why? The article gives very closely related internet entrepreneurial sites formally thought of as crazy.

Ebay is quite possibly one of the world’s largest mediums to buy and sell items and goods. Myspace and Facebook are two of the most popular ways of CMC and even the most frequently visited sites on the internet. World of Warcraft has become somewhat of a cult. Even Google, a search engine, is eating up smaller useful sites to add to their electronic empire. Crazy right? Well they made people crazy rich with just a little ingenuity, some cyber elbow grease and an original idea. The world is evolving into a keyboard and a computer monitor, and those who jumped on board have made a living from it. People called Columbus crazy when he said the world wasn’t flat and they called Copernicus crazy when he stated that the earth revolves around the sun. Is it really so different? Now Ebay is worth millions of dollars and Google is one of the highest publicly traded stocks. My point is that though you may not relate to the social aspect of the applications, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other parts of it that may interest you. I know I could use the benefits from owning my own company worth a quarter of a million dollars, it would probably make retiring a bit easier and, oh I don’t know, sooner. And they do what, digitally create goods for second life. Sure beats back breaking labor and long hours for minimun wage. I think before you refer to something as crazy, look at other stuff that was considered crazy. Those who do not learn history are doomed to not monetarily benefit from the future.

On line communities

Communities area large part of our lives…if not the most vital and important aspect. A community as defined by the dictionary.com is “a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists”. Though communities have for a majority of history been perceived as a physical place of inhabitance, with the ever changing and expanding usages of the internet, the way communities are viewed has changed.

In the article we read for our on line class they looked into three main aspects of commuities, place, interest and communion. Interest is the most important quality to an on line community. People join the group based on their interest of the ideals of the group. Whether it is a shared hobbies, information or just overall random information these on line groups are becoming a very popular way of communication.

Since joining my Pittsburgh Steelers yahoo group I know it has become important to my love for the Steelers. Seeing other fans share my ideas such as the recent injury woes for the Steelers. With our top 2 running backs out with injury, they debated who the Steelers should get to help maintain a consist running game. This is a very important topic based on the success of the team and possibility of a playoff run.

On line communities are becoming a popular way for Computer Mediated Communication. It allows people to overcome distance and even shyness to share ideas and common interests. Computer Mediated communication is a very cheap and convenient way to achieve these goals. It has, in my opinion, improved the quality of life for many people.

Stitches via the intranet

After reading this weeks on line class articles, it really made me realize how beneficial the Internet has become to medical standards for the every day human being. Before the Internet, we actually had to go to see a doctor, yuck!

In the article speaking about addiction, it showed me how scary an addiction to thew Internet can be. The addiction is based upon the convenience and importance to the user, there are so many options on line to become addicted to. One great example is Web MD and other Internet medical doctors, as I'll refer to them. In the article the author talked about how his daughter was bitten by a tick, and he used the Internet to figure out how to get it off of her head. He used one of these Internet doctors and within minutes was able to get the tick removed. I remember as a child i had a tick, and my parents argued about how to get rid of it, asked neighbors and even called relatives to see how to deal with it. It took between 20 to 30 minutes to get the tick removed. Because of how fast he was able to cope with the medical problem he was forced to act upon a minor problem he prevented it from becoming a major medical problem. This is a good example of how the Internet has improved the quality of life of it's users. On the flip side, the convenience of using such Internet tools can always prevent people from getting correctly diagnosed of their problem. When I injured my knee at the beach this summer, instead of going to a doctor, i entered my symptoms into the Web MD search thing and thought i may have torn a major ligament in my knee. It ended up only being a minor tear, it still needed surgery and if i were to continue to move normal on it, it could have become a major problem.

Moving on from Internet medical doctors, another closely related topic for discussion is actually discussion groups for parents of the medically ill along with the collection of information about diseases. I couldn't imagine if an offspring of mine was diagnosed with an illness or condition that limited their everyday activity, i would have no idea what to do. The Internet is a great way to gather information on the situation and help with knowledge and techniques during the process. I'm sure it had proven invaluable to families in related situations world wide. Also, another great way the Internet helps in such situations is the related discussion groups. In the article he talks later that a user posts on line in a community about their child that was diagnosed with leukemia. The ability for these people to communicate with others in the same boat can help them cope and understand.

These two examples are excellent examples of how the Internet has improved the quality of life for numerous Internet users. Convince and practical usage has moved many people to get and share medical information through a chord and pages with typing on them. As a warning, I emphasis the importance to always be correctly diagnosed by a professional with a legitimate medical background and education.