Virtual Home

Virtualization of money

From exchange things to using
coin as a form of payment.

In the ancient days where there was no currency existed, people exchange things with each other. Later on, there was cowrie, stone, metallic coinage and so on served as a form of money. (Davies G., 2002) In the modern age, after the establishment of the banking system, currency transformed even more rapidly. People used to receive cash as payment turned into a bank cheque - a paper that states certain amount of cash it represents; later on, with the computerization and digitalization of banking, people do not even receive any physical form of payment but an increase of numbers in their bank account that represent money.  In very recent years, a new form of money, virtual money - Bitcoin - was founded.

Recognition of virtual currency as real cash

Virtual money become real.

Money is an example of how computerization and digitalization change the form of a physical object into virtual. Countries have different attitude towards virtualized reality matter. Vermeer K., (2012) expressed that while Korean is welcoming this change, “the United States, on the other hand, draws a clear distinction between virtual reality and real life.” South Korea was the first country that recognize virtual currency the same as cash (Rosenberg D., 2014).

Virtual reality to chicken

While money has gained recognition to play a role to the real world, the farming industry is trying to push this “virtual and reality” boundary into a new level.The feeding of chicken has always be an issue in chicken farming. In order to maximize the production, chickens are always put in a high density living environment that they barely have any room to move. Also chickens like to fight with each other, pecking others’ eyes and so can cause numerous of damage or death. To avoid the loss, the farmers implant chicken glasses onto the chickens, so their front visual is disabled and so they are not able to fight with each other. (Like glasses for chickens!, 2014) Possibly inspired by this industry practice, Second Livestock (2014) designed an enhanced version of chicken glasses recently, to put chicken into virtual life once they were born. So they will not have any visual of how poor they live in the real world anymore. Instead, they will live in a virtual world which they have “a comfortable and healthy home”.

People experiencing virtual life
with chicken glasses worn.

Chicken Glasses

Wearing the virtual glasses,
the chicken will live their
entire lives in a virtual environment.

Are we far from living in a virtual reality environment?

Facebook just acquired the company that developed this technology (LeBlanc T., 2014). Google has already launched the Google glasses and is developing contact lens camera (Trenholm R., 2014). The technology is ready to put human into a more virtual world. Not mentioning the world is facing the problem of overpopulation (over lack of natural resources.to sustain the growth of population) (Tal A.,2014). I believe when the day that humanity and ethics issues are removed; when people is willing to trade in their living with convenience, or escape the cruel reality, the day of human living in virtual reality like what they want to do with the chickens today will come.