What does it mean to say that Second Life is a Disruptive Technology?
A disruptive technology is a technology that interrupts and thus changes the evolution of other emerged technologies (Thornburg, 2010).
Rosedale (2008) explains how Second Life is a disruptive technology today. The virtual world, Second Life, is creative outlet for inventors and people who find virtual worlds as appropriate environments for their design experiments. Virtual worlds, such as Second Life, allow people to simulate a world with the same laws of physics and build things in a “practice “environment. This allows for creative people to try out ideas in a tangible way that never before existed. Anything is possible with Second Life. This represents a way to reinvent ideas, selves, identities and society. The amount of content and people involved in Second Life is expanding by about 5 percent every month. It's a really large world, co-created by millions of people today. Second Life is very exciting for people today, and will likely create a shift (or disruption) in our paradigm that will be even bigger than the impact that the Web had on our world today. The reason for this is that Second Life is built with symbols rather than text (as with the Web), and images are inherently a universal language. Also, Second Life, allows for socializing in real time among participants. This will create a connected, simultaneous experience for human beings online (Rosedale, 2008).
Based on this information, Second Life, has the potential to be a disruptive technology and make the Internet obsolete.
References
Rosedale, P. (2008). Second Life [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks /the_inspiration_of_second_life.html.
Second Life (n.d.) www.secondlife.com
Thornburg, D. (2010). Disruptive technologies Vodcast: In Laureate Education, Inc. Emerging and future technology. image credit: Second Life @ www.secondlife.com
Great post, Devonee! You mentioned Second Life creating a shift (or disruption in our paradigm and that it will be a greater impact on our society than the Web, but how do you think it will affect the classroom and education as a whole?
ReplyDeleteJennifer: I think that Second Life, and virtual reality will play a part in the classroom in that we as teachers (or designers of education) can make learning into a virtual game (collaborating with others) where students can try out decision making and see what the implications are of the decisions without actually having to act out in the real world with more serious consequences. So for the social sciences, I think that Second Life is going to be really big if we take advantage of this technology.
DeleteOnce second life becomes more popular with teens I can see it making sites such as facebook obsolete. It also be an excellent tool to use in the classroom as well.
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