Cyberworld

This guy, David Storey, works (when he leaves the basement) with my husband, they were in the same office until the computer science people moved buildings.

There was a bit of talk when he bought the virtual island on Planet Calypso in Entropia Universe. I wondered where he got the money as a PhD student – turns out he had backers. He says that he spends four hours a day on his virtual island. I don’t know how much time I spend on the internet but it got me wondering if this is the way we are headed, becoming hermits, interacting with the world via our computers. It’s not necessarily a bad thing if that’s what you want to do. Face to face social skills would diminish I suppose. The thing I would worry about would be the disrespect some people show on the net, they become numb to the fact that there’s an actual person at their computer, not some emotionless robot.

The article also questions (in regards to a character in the game David plays) whether it’s okay to have cybersex with minors or people that look like them. This character in particular is a 700-and-something year old woman in the body of an eight year old, apparently she sells her personal services. Is it a good idea to feed people’s fetishes that if fed in the real world would be illegal and wrong? What if that person went out and their perception of what’s wrong had become even more skewed. At least you have to be 18 to play, or over 13 if your parent or guardian made you an account.

I’m very tempted to sign up, make an avatar and take a wander around, I wonder how much you can do without inputting any actual money. I wonder how much you can actually make on the planet. It would be a pretty sweet to make a living by doing stuff like building virtual apartment blocks and shopping malls!