Mod4BlogAssign- The Disruptive power of Second Life:

Second Life began in 2003.  It is free online virtual 3D worlds initiated by Philip Rosedale, chairman of Linden Labs.  Residents can actually build their own worlds.  They interact through Avatars where members can explore, meet people, do business, and share knowledge.  Second Life is intended for people sixteen and older, but the average age is thirty two.  People have the chance to build worlds, visit places, and purchase items that they may not be able to do in real life.  In Second Life, anything is possible. 

Second Life is a disruptive technology because it is unavoidable.  People can be who they want to be and work where they want to work.  There is fair ownership in the economy.  There is a challenge for people to learn faster, be more creative, and be a better person virtually than in reality (Rosedale, 2008).  The innovations that it displaced are AAAs (open source games), MMOs (massively multiplayer online games), and RPGs (role playing games).  Second Life is not a game, it is a social experience.  It is a place where you can show off creativity, curiosity, and share amazing ideas that you may not be able to do in the real world.  It is better than a structured game.  I believe Second Life will be around for a long time to come.  I believe it will evolve.  For the next decade virtual worlds will be how more people interact (Rosedale, 2008).  The social benefit of Second Life is the lack of culture (Rosedale, 2008).  In the virtual world, you can become anything you want.  A female can become a male, A Hispanic can become Caucasian, a person can become an alien.  While the economy in the real world was in trouble, Second Life economy was booming.  In Second Life, people implicitly and inherently interactively share information.  Businesses utilize the site for training purposes.  People across the globe meet and collaborate.  In my industry working with elementary students, technology is evident.   Students are used to playing video games in 3D.  Teachers are expected to utilize technology across the curriculum.  Second Life would be advantageous to students.  They could create their own avatar and interact in a classroom. 

Rosedale, P. (2008). Philip Rosedale on Second Life [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/the_inspiration_of_second_life.html.

Hindman, B. (2012). Retrieved from fir http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/06/26/the-soapbox-the-death-of-aaa/

Mod3 Rhymes of History Technology

Rhymes of History Technology

Thornburg stated that the impact of a new development rekindles something from the distant past (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009).  He goes on to talk about how we see it in the third quadrant of our tetrads.  It is not the technology itself that is being rekindled, but the impact of the technology (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009).  This is how Rhymes of history is explained.  People have added and subtracted since the beginning of time.  The calculator has rekindled man’s ability to count on, count back, count repeatedly, and subtract repeatedly.  Before written numbers existed, there was the abacus.  It has evolved to the mechanical calculator that performs basic arithmetic operations.  Now there are scientific calculators that include trigonometric and statistical calculations.  There also algebraic and graphing calculators.  But the basic calculator rekindles man’s ability to count. 

Kevin Kelly discussed the concepts of embodiment, restructuring, and codependency on the web as examples of the rhymes of history (Kelly, 2007).  He goes on to state that the web works much like the brain.  The calculator embodies us because it is an extension of human senses.  Kelly states that machines are extension of human senses and humans are the extended senses of the machine (Kelly, 2007).  The machine cannot work without us.  It is restructuring because it links us to pages.  One of the accessories on the computer is a calculator.  It causes a codependency because we depend on it for so much.  There has been controversy in schools because educators believed that dependence on calculators made students lose the ability to calculate in their heads.

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculator

http://calculatororigins.com/

Kelly, K. (2007). Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the Web [Speech]. Speech delivered at the EG 2007 Conference, Los Angeles. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Emerging and future technology: Rhymes of history. Baltimore, MD: Author.