Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds can be used creatively to recreate lost but not forgotten pieces of the past in the form of places of historical importance or in which historical events took place. An example is a recreation of the Chelsea hotel where Mr.Brown constructed a version of the Chelsea Hotel in Second Life to bring alive the hotel's long gone old spirit.
" At Mr. Brown’s Chelsea, Mr. Hamilton happily reported, it was as if the upheaval of the past few years had never taken place."
Even evidence of the infamous incident of Sid and Nancy shows in this virtual world in Room 1000 where a visitor can find " a bloodstain on the bed, and a bass guitar leaned against a wall."
 Another idea for virtual worlds is to create a safe, relaxing environment for social interaction. Naughty Auties is a virtual space within Second Life dedicated to people on the Autism spectrum.
according to David Savill, who created this space, the benefit is "that visitors can practice social interaction and find information about the condition. The graphical representations of real people create a "comfort zone" that can coax users out of their shells and get them communicating with others".
Another advantage of the virtual reality space is that it creates opportunities for communication between individuals that would be otherwise unthinkable in the real world.  To quote the multimedia artist Annie Ok “There’s no way that you’re going to go onto a flat Web site or message board and instantly strike up a conversation with somebody who works for MTV or I.B.M. or the president of Harvard. But these things are possible in virtual worlds.”
In the world of business meetings, virtual environments such as Second Life can help by recreating the water-cooler experience(impromptu "water cooler" conversations that occur in a real workplace, where colleagues can share information they may have forgotten to communicate in meetings.) The virtual environments can also give a sense of place.
The cons are that it still doesn't compare to real life, and there are things you just can't do in virtual reality, like enjoying a drink. However, you can have a chat with the bartender. 
As more and more people become conversant with computers, I expect to to see this technology getting more popular amongst both explorers such as those who would enjoy the virtual lower east side and big businesses that might utilize the technology to their advantage when long-distance conferences are concerned.