Have any of you heard of Second Life? Some of you more game-geek enthusiasts out there (and I include myself in that number), will undoubtedly have heard of it. And some of you CSI afficionados may recall a few episodes of CSI: NY, which included a ridiculous story involving an assassin who also had an "avatar" in Second Life, an avatar through which the intrepid team of bad actors tried to corner and capture her with.
Anyway, Second Life is an online and free alternative reality. Free in the sense that it is "free" to join and generally "free" to continue to interact with, but which eventually you need to pay to use for various attributes and accessories that the game engenders.
Basically, the concept is that you create an "Avatar" (which is an interesting use of the word, as it actually means a manifestation or incarnation of a deity. I think, in fact, that it's origins are Hindu [someone can check this as I may be marginally off] and refers to the earthly embodiment of Vishnu, so its weird that you create a character to represent you in a virtual world and use a word meaning a godly incarnation in doing so....taking "for the love of God" to a whole new meaning). The avatar then gets to wander around and "live" in a virtual world. This virtual world is simply crazy to people who aren't into gaming worlds that much, but it is so popular that many institutions have created online presences in the Second Life world (including embassies, companies [BMW, Cisco, Caldwell Banker...etc etc.] and organizations).
PADI has decided to jump on board. In fact, they've even created a PADI centre on an island they've specifically created for people to go virtual diving from:
And you can indeed go virtual diving:
From what I have seen, the world that you can virtually explore is, however, a tad dull.....I know there's some crappy diving to be found, but that terrain above looks awfully boring. I think it is kind of creepily interesting though that someone feels the need to include a nitrox tank on a virtual dive....
What is even stranger is that I found out today that PADI is now using their Second Life presence as part of the continuing educational updates that all PADI instructors are expected to complete on an annual basis! I was completing one of the sections of the update online today. The updates used a few hypothetical scenarios wherein a hypothetical instructor took certain actions. The point was to highlight some of the do and do nots that instructors must be cognizant of from a risk management perspective. Well they used avatars in Second Life to demonstrate the scenarios!!
I'm of two minds....it was such a cool idea and a novel use of technology as a teaching aid. It was also sort of surreal, obviously artificial and easy to lose focus. So I don't know if I love it or hate it. Would you find it easier to learn when you are being taught by a virtual teacher? The voice overs were also incredibly lame and totally didn't fit the characters they used as the avatars...
The dive world is getting cooler and weirder.....
Keep it reel (spelt wrong on purpose, all you pedantically-minded vultures) ... or is that, "keep it virtually real"?
No comments:
Post a Comment