Second Life and some thoughts

I'd spent time exploring some random places. Since it is a virtual world, there is no doubt that people would create places like wonderland. There were also those places that mimics the existing places in the real world, and what I found interesting about them was the descriptions.

For example I found this place call "Better Earth", and the creators' intention was to "improve human relationship with nature". The environment make references to "the lands along the Bay of Biscay on the northern coast of the Iberian peninusla", as the description says; and all the animals and plants in the virtual world refer to the real animals and plants living in the place.

To be honest, when I came to the introduction of the place I immediately consider it ridiculous. Why do people prefer staying in front of the computer and watch this fake replica of the nature world over walking into the real nature? How do you "improve" human-nature relationship with this world that only exists in the computer?

However, after I thought about it a little bit longer, I started seeing it in a different way. As mentioned in class, there are a lot of users use Second Life as a way of escape. Maybe this is just a way to get in touch with these people, just like other environmental groups get in touch with different kinds of people in other ways.

After having this thought I kind of came back to my first impression that, even if people are getting the reminder, would they do anything about it? This then leads to the cliche debate about human and nature, and I stop thinking about it.

I also found this places that replicated the Chinese Qing and Ming style imperial palace. The description of the places emphasizes that everything is built accurately according to the period.
When people have the freedom to build anything they want, there are always some of them who choose to bring something they are familiar with into the free world. This can also be seen in the last example about the plants and animals. I found this pretty interesting.

Besides these, there are truly a lot of amazing things to look at.