Topic 2 - Virtual environments & cognition

Exercise 2.1 Virtual environments and your cognition

Ethics on Facebook

Examining the privacy policy of the site gives clear information how they would use our personal information and how to utilise the privacy settings provided by the site to secure our information. The age of a member is used to filter content appropriate for a member and also the site provides clear notice it does not knowingly allow anyone under the age of 13 years to register. This has been implemented by prompting the user to enter the date of birth at registration time, though the site cannot actually verify users input.

Further it acknowledges tracking site users by IP address and also how certain data mining practices are used. Providing content that may be most suitable for the member is stated in favour of this practice. The site assures they do not identify any individual in providing these services. However there will always be instances where individuals would feel their privacy being lost, compromised or invaded due to the modern technology and ethics being questioned.
Read the latest case to appear against facebook.

I think it is difficult to say you are happy with the ethics of any technology, because technology evolves and new possibilities emerge and information you provide today can be and will be used and shared in new ways tomorrow. Take a look at current face book
privacy policy for complete information.

Social cognition & visual cognition

Cognition is the scientific term for the process of thought. Social congnition is an approach to understand social phsycology. This approach tries to analyse the underlying cognitive processes to understand social phsycology. Main process areas of analysis are perception, judgement and memory of social stimuli, information processing and behavioral and interpsonal consequences of cognitive processes. See definition of
social cognition at International Social Cognition Network.Visual cognition is the process of interpreting and understanding visual information.

Exercise 2.2 Virtual worlds and "citizenship"

What is Virtual

Three definitions are proposed by H. Tavani in his book, Ethics and technology as
a) As opposed to or contrasted with "real" - virtual object
b) As opposed to or contrasted with "actual" - virtually finished the task
b) Express as a feeling - When conversing electronically or on a telephone with someone who's physically many miles away but feeling virtually there.

Join second life

Download of the client was quite quick, created a profile and chose a community called Bigpond to arrive at Second life. The look and feel, graphics, controls provided and the simultaneous tasks happening were quite good. There were times when you press the arrow keys to move the avatar and there is a few second lapse but compared to some of the web sites with much less interaction than second life I think response was really good.

I spent nearly about two hours exploring the environment of Bigpond.

Point mouse on the avatar and right mouse click to access avatar properties, you can change hair color, body shape, height, eyes and even add tatoos!

Online help guide was quite good - I received an invitation to join a group and accepted it, but then didn't know how to "get out of the group". Consulted the help and there is a function called "leave."

Next I tried the Serach for places function, use the pull down box to see available categories. You can selecte a place from the list, click on teleport to arrive at the selected place.

Apart from the attractive nature of the characters and the surroundings I had a sense of “cannot trust any character” throughout the time I spent there. Who is really behind the character or avatar appearing there? I entered a real estate agency which I cannot remember the name. I was greeted by possibly the receptionist there. She showed me properties available for rent for 8000 L(Linden dollars) with two weeks upfront payment required. During this encounter I learnt something new. She said I see you arrived here yesterday? I figured out that we can right click on the other character, and see their profile data or may be the shared content at least. I left the real estate office, but wonder who would have been really behind the character? But then again the whole experience of a virtual environment is whether to be your real self or to explore your imagination and new possibilities?

Interface and bandwith

Interface is quite easy to follow, cannot complain about the bandwith requirements. Help provided was easy to read and find the information. Functions are provided in a variety of formats such as menu, short cut & context sensitive.

Exercise 2.3 Create and record your online persona

Avatars on the virtual world can be represented by a picture, graphic or a 3D character. Second life offers variety of customization as hair color, body shape, height and even eyes and tatoos.
I would definitely use a persistent avatar across all sites.

Exercise 2.4 Online Identity and your state of presence

With every web site requiring a user id and password to register with them users are faced with a burden of keeping track of their user id/password information. Some websites have adopted the email id as a means of creating user ids.

With the current situation the idea of a one id across the online environment seems to be a required solution to the problem. However in the real world the person and id is both present when required for verification, but in the online world this would
not be able to be achieved.

Phishing

Use email, web sites, games or instant messaging to trick people into disclosing sensitive information by pretending the communication was from a legitimate user or organization.

Pharming

Hijacking a web site URL and redirecting the user to a non legitimate web site trying to collect unauthorized information

Privacy invasion

Access or collecting information about someone without their consent

Identity theft

Pretending to be someone else by using the user id and password or name and address or other verification related information about a person without their knowledge and to gain access or execute an unauthorized task