Since the introduction of Web 2.0 Standards at the annual Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, websites have adopted numerous features to survive the rigorous dotcom market.

Companies such as eBay (founded in 1995) have incorporated new web standards to remain the market leader in online auctions. Simplicity is what the user wants, and the easier a website is to use the more they will come back time and time again. The introduction of eBay User Feedback is a perfect example of Web 2.0, allowing you to see who are trusted sellers and who to avoid doing business with.

"Invariably, Web 2.0 is a term you love to hate or hate to love but either way, you'll know you'll get folks attention by saying it."
Dion Hinchcliffe

The recent launch of Facebook has shown how Web 2.0 can become a major social success. Set up in 2005, the website has rapidly increased to a community of 350 million users. In essence, its a sophisticated electronic diary, allowing you to share content with friends. However, Facebook is criticised for its Privacy Policy, with some believing its used for surveillance and data mining.

Some companies, such as Amazon, log what products you browse and purchase. Subsequently, this allows them to show reccomendations based on it's database; a very clever business model. Furthermore, Amazon is such a joy to browse and purchase from that it's placed many book shops on the high street into crisis.

So, is Web 2.0 addictive? In circumstances such as Facebook the answer is a profound yes. The younger generation spend extremely long hours online, and Facebook has now become both an addiction and concern for some. However good technology becomes in the future, such as Web 3.0, you will never beat the physical and verbal interactions in real life.

Computer games are now a normal aspect of everyday life; but are virtual worlds really immersive, and not just entertaining?

The first major computer game that demonstrated how open worlds could work was Grand Theft Auto III. Rockstar, the developers, moved dramatically away from previous 2D incarnations into a large scale 3D world. The player could roam the fictional map of Liberty City similarly to real life, choosing how to complete goals and objectives. As years passed, no other game could match the overall GTA experience. Rockstar later released Vice City, San Andreas and GTA IV, the latter regarded as the best game of all time.

However, computer games such as GTA have come under criticism recently for encouraging violence. One teenage boy shot two police officers and a dispatcher to death in 2003, apparently depicting acts from the game.

Not all virtual worlds are violent, however, with some perfectly suitable for young audiences. Need for Speed Most Wanted is a good example, allowing you to freely roam a virtual city with high performance cars, whilst trying to become the most notorious street racer. The cars were even laser scanned to enable maximum realism.

Another interesting virtual world is Second Life, a method of interacting with each other over the internet with avatars (a virtual character). The possibilities are profound; you can build realistic structures and replicas, and engage in normal real life activities. Similarly to GTA, Second Life has also come under criticism, with some strange occurrences.

"It may have started online but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much."
Amy Tayler

Overall, you could suggest virtual worlds are immersive environments. However, I believe its down to your personality and interests, and your state of well being. If you're depressed in real life but happy in Second Life, the virtual world may cheer you up during your short period of immersion. Some people take Second Life way too seriously; should virtual activities really affect real life relationships?

Computers have come a long way in such a short space of time. Random Access Memory (RAM) used to be measured in kilobytes (KB), but has now evolved into gigabytes (GB). Hard Disk Drive's (HDD's) are much the same story; changing from megabytes (MB) to gigabytes (GB), or even terabytes (TB). Take a look at this chart to get your head around the byte terminology.

It's the main computers brain (the processor), however, that has dramatically become more complex and sophisticated. Take the first ever Apple Macintosh as an example, which had an 8 MHz Motorola 68000 microprocessor with 128 KB of RAM. That in today's standards is extremely slow; to prove a point lets compare it with the latest Apple iMac. With a 2.8 GHz Quad Core processor running on 16GB of RAM, the new iMac provides extreme computing power.

Now, do all these developments mean computers are becoming gradually closer to surpassing the human mind? In 1997, Garry Kasperov took part in an experiment by IBM to beat it's chess playing computer named 'Deep Blue'. The machine won two games, lost one and drew three, therefore proving more intelligent than the human counterpart (who was the reigning world champion). This was a glimpse of how machines could easily become more superior than the human race.

"A machine that can think remains the dream; and it's still many years and quite a few startling breakthroughs away."
Computer History Museum

Numerous films have also showcased how artificial intelligence and robotics could go wrong. A fantastic example is I, Robot. This demonstrates how robots could have emotions and turn against humanity even when programmed with the 'Three Laws of Robotics' written by Isaac Asimov.

However, modern day computers are useless without a form of operating system. Turn on any computer with a blank hard drive and nothing will happen. In essence, computers can only become more intelligent with programming or development by human beings. Therefore, if acting carelessly, we could cause one of mankind's creations to turn against us; possibly resulting in huge consequences.