What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used?
We define Virtual worlds as “a computer-based simulated environment populated by many users who can create a personal avatar, and simultaneously and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its activities and communicate with others”. Nowadays people, especially kids, are using those worlds and they spend at least a couple of hours of their days to live the experience of others worlds.
These virtual worlds can be used in different ways, the most popular is gaming because the public attracted are kids, and they look for new interactive ways of entertainment. As we can see in the article After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot? other ways to use virtual worlds are “You can use virtual worlds in education, in delivery services, or as an advanced form of telehealthcare that offers so much more than videoconferencing. Virtual worlds can give us social connectivity, built-in support groups, and ways to avoid ever being alone again.”
What are the pros and cons?
As any technology the virtual world has pros and cons. First, talking about pros we can see that this new worlds offer to users Social connectivity, is not the same classic social connectivity of 10 years ago, now they can play, chat or hang from their comfortable space at their homes, this fact is an advantage for people with problems to communicate or social problems. In the article iReport: ‘Naughty Auties’ battle autism with virtual interaction we can see how people with Asperger’s syndrome feel that this worlds let them socialize without pressure, as the creator of this virtual world said “So you’re not going out into the real world meeting people, you’re going meeting people online and in your own home, so you’re perfectly relaxed. It’s just a fantastic tool to use to bring people together.”
The real problem starts when people cannot differentiate between real life and virtual life, and they spend too many hours in a world that does not exist, they are trying to avoid being alone but at the end of the day in the real life they are alone because they isolate themselves.
How do virtual worlds foster creativity?
Another positive factor for virtual worlds is the possibility of express creativity. In the virtual world there are no barriers of money, space, or self-esteem, it is a world where people can be anything they want and create what they want, they can build everything from scratch without any limit. For this reason creativity for users in virtual worlds it is infinite.
What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?
I believe that in the future virtual world will be mix with real world, like an augmented reality, because right now humans need to find new ways to express creativity, build new things, socialize, all that without missing real life.
Gala 
I agree! It is important that people especially young people are able to differentiate between virtual worlds and real life.
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You wrote as a conclusion that virtual world will be mixed with real world (which is already happening as you said it with the augmented reality) because humans need to find new ways to socialize. So you don’t think that a danger of all this is on the contrary that humans will “lose” socialization if they continue their improvement of virtual worlds ? I mean, people may be “virtually” socialized in the virtual world because they meet a lot of new people and discuss with them, but in a way they also lose it since they stay at home and have no physical contact with the outside and real world… and augmented reality won’t change it since you can use it thanks to a helmet on your head that hide you from the rest of the world.
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