"Soldiers Get Virtual Reality Therapy for Burn Pain"

Youtube video here.

The comments underneath the video provoke interesting thought. Is it simply distraction or a specific feature or quality of VR / of that game?

Immersion in Cyberspace: Pause for Thoughts

"Sitting almost motionless at a computer, our eyes fixed to a screen, our fingers tapping at a keyboard, can we free our minds from the physical body, reaching across space and time to the minds of others, expanding it outward into a universal human Mind? Or, attached to a mostly dormant body, will our cyberminds wander off into a dangerous territory of unrestrained illusion? Perhaps the many millennia of evolution of the mind-body human have reached a point where we can progress beyond the physiological side of that integrated duality. Or maybe we are slapping Mother Nature in the face. If we try to leap out of those millions of years of evolution, maybe we are leaping right into disaster.

These are complex scientific, philosophical, and religious questions. At the moment, we have no answers. Good solutions usually show themselves as a compromise, a Middle Way. In the future, we won't have to choose between cyberspace and the f2f world. We'll choose between different ways of combining the two. In the meanwhile, if we're going to entertain any hypothetical but enlightening ultimatum, consider this one: If you had to choose between spending the rest of your life only in cyberspace, or in the f2f world, which would you pick?"

So which would you pick? Think carefully before you answer...pros and cons stated.

(The above came from a recommended article in Suler' EBook. Read it here) This article on The Two Paths of Virtual Reality is also a good and easy read).

Students' Brains Re-wired by Internet

"British students are unable to concentrate on reading an academic book because the internet is 're-wiring' their brains a new documentary claims".

Take a look at the article. Hold any validity? (from your experience)?

(Armchair) Work-Based Learning

Think our Work-Based Learning Modules might be more or less popular? Think this approach might be more or less useful to our undergrads? Advantages and disadvantages?

Using Second Life for Workplace Learning 03-25-09

View more presentations from twerner.

SLowly resembling FL?

A presentation that provides a good overview of the uses of SL. Any surprises?

SecondLife, a real new world: life, business and toxic immersion

View more presentations from danrev.

For those of you interested in readng about SL culture and news, here's a link to what has been voted the best blog on the subject. 'New World News' by Wagner James. Cornupcopia of the cranky and manky (amongst the sane tidbits) BUT, it does give an insight into the 'culture'. The 'Avatars United' article is particularly bizarre. At least to me...and now. :/

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/

'Ello all. Here's a little snippet of John Perry Barlow's 'Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace' manifesto (which we'll be visiting briefly, in full, next week) to assist in appreciating dominant mental models of cyberspace.

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind….

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live…

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, andcontext do not apply to us. They are based on matter, There is no matter here… Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion….Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions…

We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts. We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before".

John Perry Barlow

Davos, Switzerland, February 8, 1996.

Inspired by the 'Brain in the Vat'

'I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man