Task 3

Think back to our discussions on Second Life. What are the social concerns of the development of the kind of technology discussed in this article? How is it changing the way we interact? What are the issues on control and censorship? Who is left behind?

Second life is one of the largest social networks who use avatars for the user. Anybody can make an account and an avatar, looking like whatever they want. Second life is an open environment and accessed by anybody. The site has been criticised by many over the past year. One of the main concerns was the fact that anybody colud get onto it, and it was difficult to ban offenders. by blocking a hardware hash, even with other accounts these offenders could will not make an account, but a hack was found, so there are still so called paedophiles online. There have been several very high profile cases where the users exchange full, real photographs of children via second life. Many have resulted to playing as child like avatars performing sexual actions to others. The use of chid avatars has been removed, but still some are using 'Anime' avatars. This enables the abusers to contact others. By posing as a innocent child, others could be vunerable to giving over information.