Addiction, research, health in a virtual world
Thanks to New World Notes, I’ve found out about a great resource for those interested in science and virtual environments. This list has a solid cohort of health-related sites – some I’ve covered previously and some others I’m now keen to investigate further.
Obviously Second Life isn’t the only environment where interesting science is going on, but it’s ease of access and critical mass have helped it to become one of the dominant platforms.
As a clinician fascinated by the use of new technologies to achieve outcomes, it’s hard to go past anything that is looking at bridging the divide between human emotions / touch and technology. Telenoid is one such project. It’s aim is to provide an effective way to transfer people’s presence. The research on telepresence is [...]
This article in the Canadian publication, the London Free Press, describes in detail a couple of case studies of gaming addicts. The case studies themselves paint a fairly standard picture of someone with a compulsion for intensive gaming, though some effort has been made to provide balanced coverage of the issue. The premise of the [...]
This 9-minute piece is well worth a watch for any World of Warcraft player. It’s very humourous in places whilst still being respectful (somewhat) to the real issues of addiction that occur for a very small cohort of people. Enjoy: Thanks to WoW Insider for the heads-up.
One MMO player’s perspective on addiction. A worthwhile read – nothing new or groundbreaking but it at least engenders some self-examination. On key piece of social research in the future will be work days lost to MMO game playing. I’m aware of a few people who’ve called in sick to play World of Warcraft or [...]
I spent some time today reading some fascinating (offline) information about the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and later on stumbled across an interesting article by Robert Bloomfield on the recent H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak. The take home message: If you look at it this way, epidemics provide something of a ‘perfect storm’ for virtual worlds. They [...]
There’s a small but growing group in Second Life called Healthcare Education. The group was founded by the University of Michigan’s Patricia Anderson (SL: Perplexity Peccable) and a seminar series has been organised for the 26th September at 7.00am SL time (Midnight on the 26th AET). The event will be held on Health EduIsland and [...]
The latest issue of the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research has been out for a few weeks now, and I’ve been meaning to posts a synopsis, so here’s exactly that for the peer-reviewed articles in Volume 3, No.3, with some horribly abbreviated summaries of findings for those too lazy to read the articles or the [...]
The ever-growing number of health-related projects occurring in virtual worlds continues to seep through to the academic literature. On the 18th December, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published an article titled Web 3D for Public, Environmental and Occupational Health: Early Examples from Second Life. The abstract: Over the past three years [...]
The latest issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research has an article on Second Life and its uses in a health context. The Canadian researchers surveyed 68 health presences in Second Life and came to the following conclusion: We found a wide range of health-related activities on Second Life, and a diverse group of [...]
Erich Bremer is a computer and systems engineer who has created Monolith, “a molecular visualization system created to display molecular structures within the virtual world known as Second Life and allow real-time interaction with the displayed structures”. It pulls information from the Rutgers Protein Data Bank and creates that structure in Second Life, allowing people [...]
Via John Norris, there’s a call for feedback on The Path of Support, which is a great resource in Second Lif that links to health support groups in-world: Hi all..I’m posting this for the good folks at Indiana University School of Social Work. Tell us how YOU feel about The Path of Support! You are [...]
Thanks to a missed email this domain went down for a couple of weeks – all is good again now
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