A Virtual Guantanamo Bay has recently been built in Second Life.
It's aim is to create a platform where people from around the world can gather together to discuss important social justice issues, and explore the potential for activism and change. Monthly discussions are planed, which will mix real world debates and speeches, also broadcast in Second Life, while video footage and interviews with the relatives of the detainees are shown on screens. By allowing users to experience the loss of freedom, albeit of an avatar in cyberspace, it is hoped that it will promote greater understanding and empathy, and who knows, maybe even offer an end to intolerance and bigotry. Virtual Utopia.
So just how effective can something like this be, and how much will it just be for 'virtual detention center tourists'? . The various worlds of cyberspace have already shown that people are coming together in ways like never before, working collaboratively in online games and Alternate Reality games, and socialising with people from wildly different social groups and ages.
But just as cyberspace is being used to promote understanding and empathy, it's also being used as a tool to recruit soldiers into the military, the release of 'America's Army' in the U.S proving to be very successful. Kids get to see what huge guns they can play with if they join the army for real. Should we be disturbed by this propaganda aimed at kids ?, or is it no different from them playing violent shooting games anyway.
There's an interesting article in Wired Magazine "shall we play a game" on the merging on real life and the virtual world and society.
