Second Life

I found two sites in Second Life that were businesses.

The first had to do with a daily comic strip. I met the owner and his father. It was a bit unusual becasue the father was building the site for the son. The website is http://www.mushystrips.com/.

The other site I visited was named Hunters Den. I have attached a picture of the site.

I have also attached a picture of my avatar.

I found this experience interesting. I found it time consuming and was not able to appreciate why people will get a second life, many times in exchange for a real one.

Mind Reading

We have received our first homework assignment for MIS. We are to find a new technology. As I began to search for one, I remembered I watched a story on 60 Minutes, CBS news. It had to do with mind reading through MRI machines. I have attached a photo of an MRI machinedown below, I am sure you will recognize it. This MRI machine called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is able to read your brain activity and tell you what your thoughts are. Watch the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4697682n
Parts of the experiments that neuroscientists have done are quite simple. They have taken pictures and shown them to patients. The fMRI machine is able to distinguish their thoughts and identify the picture the patient is looking at. It is believed that in the next several years, collections of complex thoughts will be able to be identified by machines.
As the story mentions, there are many issues that have to deal with privacy and ethics when it comes to reading someone’s thoughts. Never the less, the advancement in technology is amazing.