Real And Virtual World Converges

I read an article on the blurring of the real world and virtual world yesterday in the Straits Times. The article is titled: Seeing Dis-believing.

The article tells us that advances in digital media technology has advanced so much that the real world and vitual world are brought so much closer together. There are merits and demerits of this. Advances in digital technology will enable us to be able to retrieve, store and view videos and images in ways there our forefathers cannot. For example, we are able to playback a video instantly or at our own leisure real time, when watching a soccer show due to digital technology. Digital technology makes it easy for us to edit video files such that we can import "fake" things into the videos. For example, in movie making, creating totally digital characters in the movies. One example is star wars. Yoda is a completely digital character in the movie.



There is another article in Straits Times today that talks about players playing World of Warcraft. Some players are obsessed with playing it and wants to level up their characters faster, so they use real money to pay others to play the game for them. Or they use real money to buy for virtual items or experiences, etc. This is another example of blurring of real world with virtual world. But they are also people of sound judgements who refrain from using real cash for paying for virtual items as reported in the articles. They don't feel it worth to buy such virtual items with their real money.





Hence, in today's highly digitalised world, we must be of a sound mind and have to deal with virtual and real worlds accordingly, not mixng the two up. If not our real world and virtual world will merge into one. This is in a sense not really healthy because the virtual world is in a real sense "just" a fantasy world. Hence, it is better to get "real" with our lives and not indulge in fantasies.