Second Life and Disruptive Technologies

Second Life and Disruptive Technologies

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible on the internet. A free client program called the Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world (which residents refer to as "the grid"). Second Life is for people aged 18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17.

Second Life is a disruptive technology I because it disrupts an entire industry or market, throwing them into disarray and often into panic. In one sense it seems to be a largely generational increment on virtual worlds both graphical and text-based of the past that provided one form or another of user-created content and scripting. This would, on the surface, qualify it as a sustaining technology.
Second life is a disruptive technology that might displace the normal evolutionary life cycle of technology. Second life might be around for another twenty years due to people wanting to live in a fantasy land an escape the realities of life. The social benefits of second life are to meet new and interesting people that one might not ordinarily come in contact with.

Social implications of virtual worlds in education might enhance learning as a final way of creating a learning experience to allow users to construct and experience their own abstract worlds, giving them firsthand experience in the transfer of two dimensional knowledge into three dimensional knowledge.


References:

http://www.massively.com/2008/07/07/mitch-kapors-sl5-keynote-and-the-linden-prize/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet11/moore.html

Rhymes of History Technology - Telephones

The telephone rekindles the technology of the past and represents a rhyme of history. The telephone is a communication device that was discovered in 1872. In 1877, Thomas Alva Edison succeeded in enabling telephone calls to be made over large distances by creating stronger electrical impulses. The telephone became portable on 20th February 1942. On this day, the American, Donald M. Mitchell, applied for a patent for his "Portable Radio Transmitting and Receiving" mobile telephone. The device transmitted using short waves, had a limited range and weighed no less than 2.5 kilograms. Another 35 years were to pass before mobile phones could be used by ordinary members of the public. It was not until 1983 that Motorola presented the first commercial mobile telephone in the world, the "Dyna TAC 8000X".

Now fast forward to this year telephones are now wireless and we can talk hands free. The latest and greatest cell phone is the iPhone. The iphone 4 with just a tap, you can wave hello to your kids, share a smile from across the globe, or watch your best friend laugh at your stories — iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. And it works right out of the box. The iphone definitely rekindles the need to communicate as such with the large rotary dial phones from log ago.

References:
http://www.yourdiscovery.com/technology/milestones/telephone/index.shtml
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html