Persona Attatchment

It is easy enough to say that people who experience life through their avatars really just need to get a real life. This kind of simplistic dismissive thinking is not unusual in complex ethical situations where people would rather avoid having to think about the complexity of the issue by dismissing it as silly. And, to be fair, there are probably a lot of people who experience life through their avatars who really do need to get a life. But, the extreme cases are easy and don't get us anywhere. At the other extreme, someone who does not have any kind of an alter ego, whatsoever, might be colorless and boring. We might say, about that person as well, that they really need to get a life. The hard part is that vast territory between the extremes. So, in order to make avatar attachment seem a little less bizarre, I am going to compare with another similar kind of attachment that we are all comfortable with. That is persona attachment.

Everybody has a persona. It is the version of yourself that you present to the world. You may even have different persona that you present in different situations. You may, for example, have one persona on dates while another persona at work. You may not think you have a persona, but when is the last time you got out of bed and went straight to work? When is the last time you farted, picked your nose, or belched loudly in front of other people? When is the last time you talked to a friend the same way you talk to your cat? Yes, like it not, you have a persona.

Your persona is not real. It is a construct you created through which you interact with the world.... not unlike an avatar. And if somebody injures your persona in some way, you probably take it very seriously. Some public figures have very highly developed persona. For example, celebrities and politicians often have a public presence that may be quite different from their private presence. You often see this dichotomy in behind the scenes stories that attempt to tell what a given person is really like. And if you damage someone's public persona they may be quite hurt or offended. In fact, you may even get sued.

We consider harm to the persona as seriously as we consider harm to the person. In fact, in many cases it is only the persona that is harmed and the person is not really harmed at all. In other cases causing harm to the persona causes harm to the person as well. So, we are comfortable with the idea of having a fantasy construct representing us in the world. And we are comfortable with the fact that, if you attack the construct, the person behind it may very well attack back.

My question is - how is this any different from an avatar? People say that an avatar is just pixels on a screen. And, as some level, that is true. However, pixels on a screen have a more real presence than the persona we present to the world. At lease you can point to or recognize an avatar. A persona has an entirely ethereal existence and yet we are comfortable being attached to a persona while we think avatar attachment is a little weird. Go figure. Maybe we are used to one so it doesn't seem bizarre, while we are not used to the other so it does.

Avatar Attachment

Yes, people actually do begin to experience life through their avatar. I think most people who have spent any amount of time in a virtual world would agree with this statement without question because it agrees with their own subjective experience. However, for people who have not spent an appreciable amount of time in a virtual world, its sounds bizarre. And yet, by examining a few analogous situations, it becomes much more plausible, if not entirely clear.

First consider compassion. Let's say that something bad happens to somebody you don't even know. You feel badly for this person. Nothing has happened to you. Your world has not changed. You don't even know the person to whom the tragedy occurred. And yet you still feel bad. You are experiencing woe by proxy. So, the idea of feeling 'for' or 'through' another person even when nothing actually happened to you is not an alien concept.

Next consider empathy. A close friend of your has a personal problem of some kind. They hate their boss or just broke up with a significant other. You feel, to some extent, what they feel even though nothing happened to you. You are, once again, feeling by proxy. Now lets say that this personal problem occurred to someone very close to you, say a relative or a child. The feelings can become quite intense. In fact, your empathic feelings may be more intense, in some cases, than if the thing had occurred to you. Just how intense can these feeling by proxy become? They can become quite intense as the next example will show.

I don't want to get too graphic here but a more shocking example is necessary to make a point. Let's say your cat runs out of the door while you are getting the morning paper. It runs into the street and it immediately obliterated by a passing car. You are in shock! The emotional impact on you is incredible. And yet, nothing actually happened to you. You mights say that you are feeling pain for the cat. But the fact is that it all happened so quickly that the poor cat probably did not feel anything. And yet your attachment to your pet causes you great emotional strife.

You may try to counter at this point by saying that a cat is a living being while your avatar is just pixels on the screen. This is true but it is only a temporary respite. Let's say that you just bought a new car. You saved up a long time and got exactly the car you want. It expresses your inner being like no other car could. And as you come out to get in your car one evening you notice that somebody left an ugly door bang on your driver's side door. You are in agony. Even though you can easily have it repaired and the car did not feel any damage, you feel as though you were scratched.

Because people attach to other people, pets, and even property we have endless ethical views on behaviors that affect others through these attachments. So, if people attach to their avatars shouldn't there be ethical positions on how avatars are treated? The answer is probably yes. But that doesn't get us very far. Should avatars be treated the same as the person behind the avatar? Or does the avatar provide a level of buffering that would reduce some of that obligation? Somehow answers to ethical questions just seem to lead to more questions.

Your Avatar and You (Or Your Avatar Is You)

People come into the virtual world of Second Life by creating an account and selecting a default avatar. The avatar is a little person who represents the user 'in world' just as a nickname or screen name might represent you in a chat room. Initially, the avatar is selected from a set of default avatars, but people begin, quite early, to customize and personalize their avatars. There are a wide variety of ways to do this. There is an Appearance Editor which you can use to change the appearance of your avatar. This is done by changing the shape, skin, hair, eyes and so on. Eventually, most people buy shapes and skins created by professional artists using more sophisticated software than the Appearance Editor. People will choose new cloths, shoes, jewelry, tattoos, and hair styles to further customize their appearance. They will join groups indicating their interests, list favorite places, and write blurbs in their profile further defining their character.

Over time their avatar will begin to develop a personality and now we begin to move into a tricky area of psychology that is not very well understood by most people. Some people will make heroic efforts to have their avatars look and behave in a way that is consistent with who they are; or at least who they think they are. They will say that their avatar looks like them in real life and acts they way they do in real life. Both of these claims are highly questionable. But they are firmly held beliefs by a lot of people.

For other people, their avatar takes on a look and personality quite different from how they are in real life. The avatar may represent who they would like to be. Or it may be an experiment into another life style, personality, or social class. Creating an avatar is a little like 'dressing up'. You get to create a novel impression, on that diverges from the every day you.

And yet others will have a whole cadre of avatars. Each with a different appearance and personality. Having multiple avatars with different personalities is hard for many people to understand until you consider a simple analogy. When a writer write a piece of fiction, they create characters to carry out the story. Each of the characters has it's own look, behaviors and personality. If the story is long or intense, the writer may get to know these characters quite well and say things like "character x would never do that" or "I tried to evolve character y into a new role but just couldn't do it". This is exactly what happens when one creates multiple avatars. They take on a life of their own just as fictional characters tend to do. And the writer/creator's job becomes one of getting to know the character more than it is of defining the character.

As the avatar evolves an even more perplexing psychological phenomenon begins to occur. The person at the keyboard actually begins to experience life through the avatar. This complex and very poorly understood phenomenon is called 'avatar attachment'. It is way to big of a topic to begin in this entry. So, I will leave the description of this phenomenon for the next post.

The Business Cost of Anonymity

Many people, including myself, have seen the potential of Second Life technology to be the next generation of the web, or the 3D web. At some point in the future we will look back at the two dimensional, point and click, web pages of today and wonder how we ever got buy with them, much as we would look at command line interfaces today and wonder how we ever managed to work with them. But, alas, this dream of the 3D web has been slow to materialize. Numerous vendors have come in to Second Life only to find disappointing results. In fact, there have been numerous news stories about vendors pulling out of Second Life due to disappointing results.

There are numerous reasons for this and I don't want to place too much of the blame on anonymity. But it is a factor both practically and symbolically. From a practical perspective, people who are doing business want to know who they are doing business with. Granted you can buy a product from a store without having to know much about the vendor or the product developer. However, if you wish to hire an application developer, an attorney or a councilor, it make a lot more difference. If you are going to try to get a degree at a virtual university or rent a conference center for an important meeting, you want to know who you are dealing with. And anonymity makes this difficult if not impossible. Dealing with anonymous vendors feels a lot like buying something from a guy on a street corner who has various products hidden in his raincoat. And as long as Second Life chooses to support anonymity, it will not achieve its potential as a 3D web.

However, a large issue is the symbolic implications of anonymity. Is Second Life a shady place where people get to live out there fantasies and do things they would be embarrassed for their friends to know about? Or is Second Life a well lit place where people go to conduct business? This is to say, is it the sleazy side of town where sneak to in order to indulge their secret longings or is it the local family mall?

I should say, in fairness, that I have no problem with people indulging their secret longings. I have no problem with personal expressiveness no matter how strange it may seem to others. I just think there is a time and a place for everything, and having an adult movie store next to a kids ice cream parlor would never fly in real life and doesn't work very well in Second Life either.

Next time we turn to the issue of avatar attachment. If people experience the world through their avatars, do we need to be concerned with how we treat avatars, or do they just need to get a real life?

The Down Side of Anonymity

If people are anonymous in Second Life, then how do you know who you are dealing with? How do you stop thirteen year old boys from coming on and harassing everyone at a Welcome Area? How do you stop sexual predators from seeking out vulnerable victims? How can you develop a friendship, perhaps even a romantic relationship with someone about whom you know nothing?
In the story of Cyrano de Bergerac a woman falls in love with a man through his letters without regard to his looks. It is a romantic reflection on what really matters in love. It is the character of the person not the person's looks.
Of course, Cyrano's flaw is that he has a big nose. But, what if his flaw was that he was a well spoken sexual predator or a serial killer? Would that matter? Of course it would. And while anonymity protects innocent people from recriminations regarding there personal expressions, it also protect maladjusted, sociopathic people from being discovered.
As hard as it is to believe, there are people who will engage in relationships solely for the purpose of upsetting the other person. It is hard to believe that somebody could be that badly bent. But anonymity protect the bent along with the normal. And often the normal suffer at the hands of the bent.

But, putting personal risks aside, there is a whole other cost to anonymity. And that is the business cost.

Anonymity in Virtual Worlds

Anonymity in a virtual world means that a person can appear as an avatar without any connection to the real person. Currently, in Second Life, users have a wide variety of options regarding the amount of anonymity they would like to have. Each avatar has a profile accessible to other avatars where they can provide information. In fact, there is a section in the profile titled 1st Life where they can provide information regarding who the are in real life. But, in fact, almost no one provides any information there. There is also a web page tab where you can provide a link to your web page. However, most people leave that blank or provide a link to a YouTube video of their favorite band. Clearly, most people like the anonymity the Second Life provides.

There are good reasons for enjoying this anonymity. If you don't like your height, weight, gender, looks, race, age or social class, you can try being some thing else in Second Life. If you wish to experiment with bisexuality or master/slave relationships, you can do so without fear of reprisals. And, as some friends have commented to me, if you screw up your relationships, you can create a new avatar and start over. Anonymity provides a great deal of personal, expressive and creative freedom. Second Life would simply not be the same without it. Any yet, as with everything there is also a down side to anonymity. And that will be the topic of the next post.

considers the trade off between a person's right to privacy as they conduct themselves in a virtual world and that person's responsibility to be who they claim to be.

Certainly anonymity allows a person to be things or to do things in a virtual world that they may not do in the real world. This freedom of self expression may be important but must be weighed against the impacts that these behaviors have on other people.

Ethical Issues in Virtual Worlds

Having pondered this a bit, it seems to me that ethical issues in virtual worlds fall into four categories: anonymity, attachment, regulation, and the moral basis for ethical decisions. There are almost certainly more. But these are the ones I came up with for now.

Anonymity considers the trade off between a person's right to privacy as they conduct themselves in a virtual world and that person's responsibility to be who they claim to be. Certainly anonymity allows a person to be things or to do things in a virtual world that they may not do in the real world. This freedom of self expression may be important but must be weighed against the impacts that these behaviors have on other people.

Attachment addresses the phenomenon that occurs when people begin to experience the virtual through the experiences of their avatar. If you insult their avatar or treat it badly, they may feel as through they have been insulted or treated badly in real life. If this is the case do we need to establish boundaries on acceptable behavior in the virtual world or do the people who are experiencing the world through their avatar just need to get a real life?

The third question is the extent to which the virtual world should be regulated. Since nobody can really get hurt in a virtual world the most harm somebody can achieve is to be annoying. But with attachment and real money things are not so simple. On the other hand, virtual worlds are great places for creativity and self expression. Unnecessary regulation can inhibit that.

Finally, what is the moral basis for ethical decision making in a virtual world? Do we make decisions as we would in the real world or does the fact that a virtual world is a simulation have any influence on the moral basis.

These questions will be examined in more detail in upcoming posts.

How Often Should You Blog?

Some people blog every day, some weekly, and some very sporadically. So, it occurred to me to ask the question – How often should you blog? I think the frequency of blogging should suit the purpose of the blog and this means that you have to know why you are blogging in order to determine how often it would be appropriate for you.

Let’s first consider the daily blog and the reasons why this might be appropriate. I can think of three reasons why daily blogging would be appropriate - the diary, writing practice, and news commentary.

In the diary blog, the author simply narrates his or her day for anyone who might be interested in following the days of their lives. If you have something unusual about you then this kind of blog can be very interesting. Unfortunately, many people who write this type of blog do not have anything interesting to say. But, for every humdrum diary blog there are always a few ardent follower. So, who am I to judge?

Writing practice seems to be a slightly more worthy calling. Most writers will say if you want to be a writer you have to write and write and write. They often recommend a daily journal in which you write everyday just for practice. I have done this and strongly endorse the practice. Some time around 2001, I started a daily journal. I made myself write 500 - 1000 words every day. I kept it up until just recently and I believe it was an invaluable experience. Of course, nobody has read my daily journals and I don't think I would want them to be read. But, I can see how writing everyday in a blog could serve the same purpose.

News cometary seems to be the best justification. If you are commenting on the financial markets, or the election process, daily comments are almost required. Things change daily and your daily observations become part of the conversation. This seem to me to represent the very heart of blogging. There are, unfortunately, a few drawbacks. First, it is a lot of work to write every day. Second, it is work for the readers to have to come back every day to keep up. And, third, writing every day does not give you a lot of time to organize your thoughts. So, I don't think daily blogging is for me.

I am going to skip over weekly blogging and go to sporadic blogging next, merely to dismiss it. I don't think a blog should be written sporadically. Suppose you are a world class thinker who waits for appropriate topics to come along, ponders them, refines your thoughts and then writes them in a blog. Isn't that an appropriate use? I don't think so. There is an informality to blogging that is defeated in that approach. It is like preparing a lecture and bringing it to a happy hour conversation.

I think weekly entries are the ideal, at least for me. With weekly entries you have time to come up with something to day and time to organize your thoughts so you can say it clearly. In my daily journal, there was much ink spilled describing the weather and why I do or don't feel like writing at the moment. If you cannot come up with something interesting over the course of a week, then you really don't have much to say and perhaps shouldn't be keeping a blog. Further, your readers will come to expect the regularity of the blog entries and if your writing is any good they will look forward to them. So, I am going to switch to weekly entries and see how that works.

Next week, I will return to the topic of virtual worlds and discuss some of the ethical issues.

Stories and Ethics

Another important, but underused, role for stories is in the exploration of ethical issues, especially ethical issues arising from the use of new technologies. I wrote a number of papers many years ago on the role of stories in computer ethics. The premise behind that work was that traditional approaches to ethical analysis may not be adequate for the ethics of technology. A common approach to ethical analysis known as consequentialism attempts to determine the ethical quality of an act based upon its consequences. This seems perfectly reasonable. But what if you don’t know what the consequences may be? This is often the case with decisions about the appropriate use of new technology.

But all is not lost. We can often speculate on the possible consequences and evaluate our ethical options based on the possible consequences. And an important vehicle in exploring possible consequences is the use of stories. Stories allow us to explore possible outcomes and select the outcome that is most likely and/or most desirable.

In fact, I am teaching a class this Spring on exactly this topic. It is called Writing Stories to Explore the Ethics of Technology. In the past, I have allowed a wide variety of emerging technologies as the focus for the stories. But, this Spring I am going to focus on the ethical issues that arise from Virtual Worlds such as Second Life and Video Games such as World of Warcraft. I think it will be both fun and enlightening.

I need to make one more point before closing this short piece. Notice how, in this notion of writing stories to explore the ethics of virtual worlds, several very different ideas are brought together. The idea includes ethics, writing, and virtual worlds – all themes in this blog. But the point is that almost any idea or any area of study or investigation relates, in some way, to every other idea, or area of study or investigation. And this is an important clue to how we advance our understanding of the world. Not every combination of ideas will produce an important insight. But most missing insights are just missing the right combination of ideas.

Some Thoughts on Blogging

I started this blog only ten days ago feeling very exposed and vulnerable. But, the only way you can learn about something like this is to try it. And so I did. Now I have a little more insight and thought I should offer some of my thoughts. I think blogging is a great idea and here is why.

First, consider a blog in which a person writes routinely but nobody ever reads it. It there any value in that? I think so. In fact, I think there is great value in writing a blog even if nobody every reads it. About a decade ago, I started a daily journal in which I would write every morning. My goal was to write around 500 – 1000 words a day. It was great writing practice and I think my writing is much stronger today as a result. But, there were further benefits beyond writing practice. Writing every morning sharpened my thinking and helped me organize my thoughts. So, I am also a much more organized and disciplined thinker today as a result. So writing everyday or even a couple times a week had merit.

You might ask, “what is the point in writing if nobody ever reads it?”. And, I have an answer to that. In fact, I will answer it with another question. “What is the point in expending energy if no work is actually done?” When we exercise we do not produce useful work. People living a century or more ago had to expend their energies to do work. Today, we don’t. And yet we still need the exercise to stay healthy and to stay in shape. So, we exercise. We expend seemingly pointless energy with no other goal than to stay in shape. Writing a journal or a blog that nobody reads is the same. You do it for the exercise. If you want to stay mentally in shape, or you want to maintain your ability to express yourself, then you need to write whether anyone reads it or no.

Next, consider a blog that people do read. Writing a blog that people actually read is like letting people watch you exercise. It adds the additional burden of being watched. What is the justification for the extra burden? I think the benefit of having a blog that people do read is that it provides a full length mirror for the things that go on in your head. Just as you might ask someone “how do I look in this suit?” or “does my new haircut look OK?”, you need to offer your thoughts to other people for validation. In days gone by, people might hang out in the general store, the barber shop, or even in a bar. They would offer their ideas to each other and get feedback. Today, we tend to hang out a lot less and have lost the environs for having our thoughts validated. That is where the blog comes in. I write my thoughts in the blog. You read them. If you have any reaction, you might tell me the next time you see me. You might send me an email. Or you might respond in the blog itself. Whatever the mechanism, the blog provides a vehicle for me to test out ideas and get feedback.

Finally, consider a blog, which is a compendium of your thoughts, that allows people who want to get to know you to catch up quickly. Suppose you meet somebody new and are on the verge of engaging in some interaction, social or professional, and want to get to know them better. One way would be to ask their friends. But, that can be rather hit or miss. Instead, if you go to their blog and read what they have written you may get far greater insight into who they are. In addition, you can challenge what you read in the blog. I would not do to say “I spoke to your friend Bob and he says you are unreliable.” However, it would be perfectly OK to say “You wrote in your blog that people rely too heavily on you. What did you mean by that?”

So, blogging seems to have some redeeming value and I guess I will keep doing it.

An Important Skill

The ability to create interesting characters is important even if you never plan to write a single line of fiction. I mentioned, in the last post, that this ability can be used in Second Life as well. I have dozens and dozens of unique characters that I have created as avatars in Second Life. This is great fun. It is good practice. And I have learned a great deal in the process. Where else, but in a virtual world, can you be some body else and see how some body else might experience the world. I have one character, for example, named Lowlife, who, as you might expect, comes from the lower end of the socio-economic ladder. His dress, boots, long hair, groups and profile comments all enhance his believability. The startling thing is that people talk to a guy named Lowlife in an entirely different way than they talk to a guy named Doctor. It is an extraordinary glimpse into the variety of experiences that different people have. If you find your way into Second Life, visit the third floor of Cosmos Academy and see a small subset of the many characters I have created.

However, this ability to create characters goes far beyond fiction and virtual worlds. You can also create characters in order to make a narrative argument. We saw a good example of this just recently in the presidential debates. "Joe the Plumber" was a fictional construct created to make a narrative argument about the effect of the two candidate's tax plans on the middle class. Unfortunately, for the McCain campaign, they were exposed because they tried to claim the fictional construct was real and the press exposed them. Had they just put him forth as an archetype character they may have gotten a lot more mileage out of it.

But, we can take this even further. You may want to sit down for this. YOU are a fictional construct also. People like to think they are 'real' or 'natural'. But, unless you are standing there naked and growling when you get hungry, you are a construct. We do not present ourselves to the world in our natural state. We construct persona and interact with the world through those constructed persona. What you decide to wear in the morning is part of that constructed persona. How you behave around friends is part of the image you are trying to create. The fact that you may behave differently around friends than you would around co-workers suggests that your construct is fairly complex. If you are not the person you want to be, or if you don't have enough friends, or if you are not interesting enough perhaps you need to work on the skill of creating interesting characters.

Creating Characters

I am going to switch gears today back to writing – specifically creating interesting characters. However, this ties in, in an interesting way, with virtual worlds. When you create an avatar in Second Life, you are, in effect, creating a fictional character. The benefit of virtual worlds over writing in this case, is that you get to test your character and debug it through interactions with other people. Try doing that in a novel. But, before I digress too far, let me get back to the topic of creating characters.

One of the most common questions asked of fiction writers, after the question - where do you get your story ideas - is – where do your characters come from? The simple answer is that they come from your imagination. But, that obvious answer is not satisfying to most people. In fact, it is not entirely true. First of all, you cannot get characters from your imagination until you have developed that capacity. So the answer really should be that characters come from your imagination once you have learned how to create them. No wonder it is an unsatisfying answer. We have gone from one unanswerable question – where do characters come from? ; to another seemingly unanswerable question – how do you develop that capacity? Actually, this second question is answerable.

People who study narrative arguments call that stuff laying around in your head, or more specifically in your imagination, fabula. It is the stuff from which you create characters, settings, and plots. So, the question now is reduced to the question of how to you develop the fabula needed to create a character. And this question we can answer more directly. You get the fabula needed to construct characters from one of two places. You can get it from either fictional characters or real characters. Fictional characters are found, as you might expect, in literature, movies, television and the like. Real characters are the people around you.

Went I wrote the Wentworth stories I used real people as characters and modified them to suit the needs of the story. And this brings us to the next step in creating characters. You begin with ideas and then you need to practice with them. You can't learn to cook without actually cooking. And you can't learn to create characters without actually attempting to create them.

"But," you might object, "why would I want to invest the time in learning to create characters if I am not planning to be a fiction writer?" And the answer is that the ability to create interesting characters has wide utility far beyond simply writing fiction. And we will get into that next time.

Second Life vs. World of Warcraft

Both Second Life and World of Warcraft are examples of virtual worlds, and yet they are very different experiences. We can see these two worlds as occupying different ends of the virtual world spectrum. Second Life, at one end, is open, organic and unstructured. It puts a lot of development tools in the hands of the user but not a lot of practical functionality. In fact, Second Life can be viewed more as a virtual world development platform than as a virtual world application. World of Warcraft, on the other hand, can easily be seen as an application. It is a largely closed system. It is fixed in functionality. It is highly structured. Comparing these virtual worlds to more familiar applications you could say that Second Life is like a development environment such as Microsoft's Visual C# although not nearly as sophisticated. World of Warcraft is more of an application such as Quickbooks. Well, enough about virtual worlds. Next time I will return to writing for a change of pace.

Social and Psychological Presence

In the last post, I defined a virtual world in terms of the technology used to implement it. I defined it as a shared, modifiable, persistent space made possible through the use of computer and network technology. In this entry, I would like to move away from the technological definition and define a virtual world in terms of the user's subjective experience.

Researchers in virtual reality use the term 'presence' to describe the feeling of being in a situation or environment that you are not really in. So, for example, if you donned a pair of virtual reality goggles and felt that you were in a different place, that would be an example of presence. But the goal of virtual reality is to create a sense of physical presence. The goal of a virtual world is to create a sense of psychological and social presence. So, I would define a virtual world as a place where the inhabitants have a sense of psychological and social presence not supported by physical reality. That is to say that you 'feel' like you are in a world with other people when you are not, in reality, in that world.

One of the key elements, I believe, in this feeling of presence is the use of an avatar who represents you. Through a phenomenon called avatar attachment, the user begins to experience the world through the avatar. If the avatar is insulted or treated badly, the user has an emotional reaction. And that reaction feels as real as if you were insulted or treated badly in real life. If your avatar makes friends with other avatars, you look forward to seeing them just as you would look forward to seeing your friends in real life. That is to say that through attachment to your avatar, you 'feel' as though the world is real even though it is not supported by physical reality.

So referring back to the previous post, a social interaction technology such as Facebook would not be considered a virtual world because the user does not have the experience of psychological or social presence. Second Life seems to be the exemplar virtual world but so does an online video game such as World of Warcraft. And, yet, these two virtual worlds are very different. In the next post, I will take of the differences between these two exemplars.

What is a Virtual World

We hear a lot about virtual worlds today as applications like Second Life become more popular. But, as with many evolving concepts, the meaning of the term 'virtual world' can be unclear and confusing. Let's begin with a simple definition, look at the elements of that definition and work up from that.

A virtual world is a shared, modifiable, persistent space made possible through the use of computer and network technology. The first criterion that the virtual world be shared says that a single user video game does not qualify as a virtual world no matter how rich the graphics are nor how complex the narrative may be. You have to have other users in there to interact with. And while it is not explicitly stated, you must interact with the other users in real time. So, if you friends could log in some kind of bot or scripted intelligent agent and then go off and take a nap, it probably would not qualify as a virtual world. There is something about the experience of interacting with other people that is central to the virtual world.

The second criterion is that the world be modifiable. That is,the users interact not only with each other but they interact with the world and change it and/or themselves in some non trivial way. A basic chat room would qualify as a shared space and would certainly meet the real time interaction requirement. But the chat room is not modifiable in any important way. So, it would not qualify as a virtual world. Now, if the chat room were modifiable, say users could define hot keys and write scripts to invoke based on those hot keys, then it may be considered a minimal virtual world.

Next, the changes made to the world must persist after the users logs off. So, let's say that some users entered a shared computer space for a meeting and interacted in real time through voice and text chat. But when the meeting was over, the space was wiped clean for the next user. This would not be considered a virtual world because the changes would not persist from one session to the next.

Finally, the virtual world must be supported by computer and network technology. A shared white board upon with users would write and draw and which would never be erased might qualify as a virtual world otherwise. But clearly the technological support adds some important element.

So, is this definition of a virtual world adequate? Not really. If this definition were adequate then social interaction technologies like Facebook would qualify as virtual worlds. Although Facebook is a wonderful technology, it does not seem to qualify as a virtual world. In the next entry, we will look further to find an adequate definition.

Virtual Worlds

I have spent an incredible amount of time over the past two years in a virtual world called Second Life. I am convinced that the next stage of our technological evolution lies in virtual worlds although I am not at all convinced that Second Life will be the product that makes it happen. The means by which this will occur is not at all clear to me at the moment. I can only see where we are likely to end up, not the path through which we will get there. Web technologies made the question “Where is the information located?” irrelevant. Information can be located anywhere in the world and we can access it via web technologies. Virtual world technologies will make the question “Where is the person located?” irrelevant. We will enter virtual worlds through our desktop computers, represented by an avatar and interact with the avatar representations of other people. Thing of all the things you do today where your location matters. You ‘go’ to work. You ‘go’ to class. You ‘go’ to a conference. You ‘go’ to a movie. You ‘go’ out on a date. Anything in which location matters will change with virtual worlds. Before the web came along, if you wanted to buy something, you were restricted to the products that were available in the stores within a reasonable driving distance. With web technologies, the entire world marketplace was opened up to anyone with a computer and internet access. That opened up a lot of possibilities. Today, the job you have, the classes you take and the people you interact with are limited largely by your location. Granted you can always move. But moving can be a big effort and once you move, you are once again restricted by the new location. With virtual world technologies, the entire world of possibilities is open up to anyone with a desktop computer and an internet connection. You could work with a group of people in California, attend classes in a European university, and hang out Australians. The problem of not finding the book you were looking for at your local bookstore went away with web technologies. The problem of not finding the right opportunities in your home town will go away with virtual world technologies.

Structuring a Blog

There are two major schools of thought when it comes to writing. The first, which I will call the "Zen" approach, encourages you to find your inner writer by practicing writing. The second, which I will call the "Technical" approach, encourages you to organize your thoughts and practice specific techniques for expressing them. Both have strengths and weaknesses which I will probably elaborate on at some point. However, for now, I am going to go with the Technical approach in this blog. I do this for two reasons. First the fact that these entries have labels suggests a need for structure. I would like to use meaningful labels to give the blog some sense of coherency. And, second, since I am new to this medium, I need to try different techniques to see what works. Since I chose the title Ranting and Reflecting, those will be two of my labels. I also like to write about writing, so Writing will be another. I am a professor in real life so I would think that some entries about a Professor's Life will leak in. And my areas are research are Virtual Worlds and Video Games. So those are likely topics as well. The question is - can I stick to a small set of topics or is this blog just going to wander around all over the place? I have no idea. I guess we will have to wait and see.

The Birth of the Online Novel

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried something like this. About a decade ago, long before anyone had ever heard of the word ‘blog’, I tried my hand at writing an electronic serial novel. I put together a list of about 40 or 50 email addresses of friends, colleagues and students. I promised them one chapter each week and promised to do my best to make it worth their time to read. I knew these people were busy and part of the challenge was to keep their attention. I did three things in my attempts to keep them reading. First, I kept the chapters short; around one thousand words. Second, I tried to end each chapter with a portentous statement that would keep them thinking about it until the next chapter came out. And, finally, I used many of the readers as characters in the story.

Telling people that you are going to write and send out weekly chapters of a detective story when you have never written a novel before is a bit of a high wire act without a net. But it worked. I learned a lot about writing. And, in the process, I wrote three full length detective novels. Later, I advanced the idea and put the chapters online on my website. I also used some budding web technologies like mouse over pop ups, to enhance the story. I was looking ahead to a new concept in writing – the online novel. But, alas, it was a little ahead of its time. It turns out that my readers looked forward to printing out the emailed chapters and reading them with their coffee. Reading from the screen was just not the same. I knew that someday the technology would advance so that it would be easier to read from a computer screen. And indeed, it has. But a decade ago, it just wasn’t there and I lost my readers. Sigh! Live and learn. If you would like to have a look at these stories, they are still online. Have a look at http://home.gwu.edu/~jartz/alter/wentworth/ . It is best to use Internet Explorer to look at them as I used some features that are not common to all browsers. If you would like to hear about some of my experiences in writing these stories, and some things I learned, check back on these blog pages.

First Try at Blogging

I wanted to try blogging but had no idea what to say. Normally, I am not at a loss for words. But those words are usually in some context. In a blog you can rant on about anything. "Ranting?", I thought, "That is a good name and I love to rant". So that should be part of it. "But, why," I asked myself, "would anyone want to read my rantings". I actually managed to come up with a few answers. If they agree with my rantings but are not as good at putting their thoughts into words, then they might like to read my rantings and just nod in agreement. OK, I am making progress. Also, I can be funny, at times, especially when ranting so people might like to read my ranting to get a chuckle. This isn't so hard. But do I really want to create a totally negative blog persona that rants on about everything. Well, this has worked for some people. But, it isn't really me. I do have the odd useful insight as well. And people may well want to read my useful insights. I have a knack for being able to reduce things to there essence and to put them into perspective. So that should be a part of my blog also. Hence, I came up with the name Ranting and Reflecting. I hope this works or I will have another thing to rant about.