Marco Polo

I find that exploring second life and pondering the possibilites makes me feel like Marco Polo must have. I am finding that there is a permanent world that already exists (I did not create) and I want to find ways to bridge the world with with I am familiar with that I am not in order to add value to both worlds.
Each day I think of new research and potential business opportunities that are available. As a researcher in special education the possibilites are so vast that I am having difficulty keeping track of all the ideas that flood in. True Story - I woke up this morning scrambling furiously for a pencil and paper as I didnt want to forget an idea that came to me in my sleep. I dont know if the idea is new or not but it basically asks the question, What impact does SL have on people who have Real Life (RL) disabilities? In my journeys so far, I have yet to see a person with a physical disability represented in SL (Heck we can all FLY for goodness sakes!). Does that mean there are none behind the RL screens? I doubt it. So, what impact does having a fully functional avatar in SL have on people with RL disabilities. What does this mean for them socially now that people no longer look away when they see the physical deformity or wheelchair? Does SL significantly increase quality of life for these people? What must it do for the social life of people who are phobic of social situations? The questions just keep coming from there.

Another example. My fiance's 14 year old son has mild autism compounded by a tramatic brain injury (hit by a car). When compounded, these two conditions have seriously affected his social and cognitive development. A genuinely nice person who aims to please, he has a huge defecit with social skills which manifests at home and school. He really only has 3 main sources of socialization 1) Family 2) Neighborhood/community and 3) School. As we all know middle school is hard enough, throw in a social skill issue and you can guess what life is like for him. I tell you all of this for this reason. Last night, he asked to get on World of Warcraft for the first time. I signed him up and we got him a character. Then I let him loose and watched. Do you know what the first thing he did (after killing some kind of weird batlike thing that attacked him)? He started walking around to every avatar he saw and began introducing himself! It was kind of funny at first because I had to explain what a NPC (non-player character) was and that they dont respond because there is no person behind the character. So I had to show him how to tell the difference. What quickly came to mind was, how valuable are virtual worlds for increasing the social networks and the quality of life for kids with disabilties like this? Sure, some of the same social mistakes he makes in RL can translate to Virtual life but there is not the permanent real world consequence of being ostrasized by those same people on a daily basis. So, if he can use this as a vehicle for learning how to talk to people without RL consequences, can/will that generalize to RL?

I could go on for a very long time about all the things that have popped into my head regarding the potential this has for impacting RL in very real and powerful ways. Suffice it to say, I am excited about the oppurtunity to explore these and other options that each of you come up with as well!