With the turn of the twenty-first century the birth of computer’s functions in every day life came to be. Coincidently there has been an alteration in the perception of both space and time. Time has been manipulated by multitasking, while space has been manipulated by the creation of virtual worlds.
What happens when someone multitasks? This was one of the major questions proposed by a PBS special called Digital_Nation. Some discoveries proclaim that multitasking may allow someone to do more than one task at a time. If you just look at the ability to do more than one thing at a time you may be able to say that someone can in a sense “create time” by vertically splitting it; however, when one splits their time vertically there is a price to be paid. Proposed by another fact in this special was that as one multitask they do each task with less effectiveness. With this piece of information we can conclude that the art of multitasking doesn’t create time, but rather waste it without even knowing it.
Likewise by creating virtual worlds are we creating space or ruining it. It is very hard to tell, because the creation of a virtual world allows for the distortion of space. For example you can be in the same room as someone else but in completely different worlds, and the contra-positive holds true as well you can be halfway around the world from someone yet be right next to them in virtual space. Creating space doesn’t seem as dangerous, but it does come at a price. It may decrease the need to travel in order to meet people in the “real world”. Some companies like IBM have people hold meetings in Second Life, a virtual reality, rather than paying for them to fly and meet in reality ("Digital_Nation life on the virtual frontier"). This means that you may never have to meet your colleagues, or you can see distant friends and meet with them in a virtual space.
While sometimes you can see people you already met, you can also make new friends online or even find a romance. Virtual space can be a perfect way for someone who doesn’t have much of a social life in the “real world” meet people and socialize with. As a player of the popular massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft I can attest to the benefits of a virtual world. It allowed for an escape from the ordinary life where I was merely a junior-high student with few friends. In World of Warcraft I played a priest who was wanted by lots of people for their art in healing techniques, and thus I had made many “virtual friends”. Though playing in the virtual world with virtual friends didn’t seem like it came with a cost rather than the $15 dollars a month happily given in order to keep friends and that reality alive.
Who knows what this bend of time and space holds for the generations of the future. While bending time for multitasking can ruin efficiency the creation of a virtual world may improve it. You must learn to take the good with the bad when it comes to technology. Since the wide population uses technology, there is no way around it. To not keep up with the times is to be left in the past. While adjusting to this current bend in time and space one can only wonder how long it will last before the next bend is created. Will human curiosity never stop and leave this world in a constant change in the perception of time and space?
"Digital_Nation life on the virtual frontier." pbs. Web. 21 Jan 2011. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/.
I agree that the online gaming sites and virtual worlds can make people a lot of friends. Usually when parents see their kids on the computer 24/7, they think that it's harming their social lives and that their children are becoming hermits when in reality their kids are most likely social networking the whole time.
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