Reading Report #4

Reading Report #4
February 7th, 2009
Kevin Wang
Summary: According to Woodrow Barfield in the “On money, taxes, and property in virtual reality” in the journal “Virtual Reality” in 2009, in volume 13, issue 37 to 39, author summarized a few issues about money, taxes and property in virtual reality; furthermore, author also mentioned a few examples relating to virtual crime and how governments help virtual consumers to protect their benefits (Barfield, 2009). The author states that using and sale virtual world property could create someone’s real wealth, so the virtual worlds are becoming a new trading platform (Barfield, 2009). Moreover, he also talked about the three main points why the virtual property owner should interest to the virtual reality community (Barfield, 2009). The first thing Barfield had explained is that the virtual items which count millions of dollars of real money trade every year in virtual worlds (Barfield, 2009). Then, author said that the value of virtual items relate to real world will change sometimes, because it depends on how famous the virtual world is and how many people playing in this virtual world (Barfield, 2009). The last thing that the article had mentioned is that there are also some crimes in the virtual world such as fraud theft (Barfield, 2009). In the journal, author used two examples from Asia and North America to show that law also will help people to protect their virtual property (Barfield, 2009). In conclusion, Barfield said that virtual worlds are becoming a part of new business and governments are paying more attention in virtual reality (Barfield, 2009).

Critique: This time, I was choose a journal article to do my reading report because I think I will need some reference from expert to support my ideas. This journal is not too long, but the vocabulary is really hard for me. Even though I can translate every single word back to my own language, I still cannot totally understand what an author is talking about. However, after I have read it for over ten times, I finally got the main idea of this journal. In my opinion, the purpose of author in this journal is describing the fact of what the virtual reality value is for users. He used neutral tone to describe what was happened and what will happen; moreover, he explained both of active and passive way about virtual reality community. I have searched author’s background on internet; Woodrow Barfield is an associate professor in Industrial Engineering at the University of Washington, and he always work on virtual environments, augmented reality, and interface design. In addition, I also have more than 8 years experience for playing on the virtual worlds. Some of opinions that he had explained in his article are really happened around my virtual life. Moreover, he also has lot of examples from news to support his opinion. Therefore, I think I can trust what he had written in this journal.