Second life, Realistic or far-fetched?

Firstly, let me define “Multimedia”: it is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media, which only use traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms.

Another term “Rich” media is also called Interactive media.

These terms, although commonly mentioned when it comes to sharing about music, animation, videos etc. is in fact, a powerful tool.

Multimedia and rich media, has made games and virtual reality possible. Now, many people in the world are immersed in this form of leisure.

It was only through COM125 that I knew abou

t this Virtual Reality Social Networking Site – Second Life.

Look at this; anyone can be a character like this on Second life - living on a beautiful beach house, dressing his or her ideal clothes. What is more, people can even meet and get married on Second Life.

It really makes me wonder if this is what we call realism, or simply too much imagination?

Out of curiosity, I actually signed up for Second Life to see what is the big deal about it. With all honesty, it was bad. It did not make me feel hooked to the virtual world at all. It could be because of my Internet connection, but loading the images in Second Life was such a slow process. The maps in the virtual world were so complicated and hard to utilize. Am I really a dork at this? Or is it a software glitch? I really don’t know.

Then again, in class, Mr Choy was talking about people who really met in real life, after meeting in Second Life. It really got me thinking. Well, maybe it is because they got the paid version, which has more features and loads more effectively? Haha.

Whatever it is, multimedia is definitely a part of the internet that is building up, and I certainly do enjoy the very enjoyable features of it like podcasts, music, video and animation. (But perhaps not Second Life.)