Spoiler

The Impact of Virtual Identity on Environmental Immersion

Avatar Identity Poster

Charlanna Beresford wrote an interesting post yesterday, Arc of an Avatar. It considers some of the reasons her interest and participation in Second Life wained over time and wonders if others have had similar experiences.

One of the most interesting aspects for me was her description of a shift in focus from place to person:

Talking more about first life reinforced those interactions and I realized that I was interacting through place and avatar less and less . . . The more I experienced it as a 3D chatroom, the less important Second Life felt to me as a place.

I've thought a lot about how immersion in the physical space of the virtual world gives birth to virtual identity. But I've never considered how the "purity" of virtual identity influences one's immersion in the virtual world. 

Is the virtual world we experience less real to us when our of avatar identity becomes muddied through personal disclosure? 

I wrote about my own Fall From Grace in November, which considered the impact of personal disclosure on identity, but not its effect on the experience of physical immersion. I'm looking forward to spending some time over the long weekend mulling this new dimension.

Something Blue

A Tale of Rapture and Zombies

If you can't view the comic on your device, please see the Flickr set here.

Open publication - Free publishing - More comic

I was trying to think of how the current Rapture story could be more absurd and the only logical conclusion was zombies.

Transcending the Issue Du Jour Mentality

A few of the issues and stakeholders in virtual worlds

The "right" answer to just about any issue related to virtual worlds depends upon one's particular point of view. Requirements, priorities, preferences, values, concerns, etc. vary greatly from one stakeholder group to another. That's why I think its a good idea to try to see topics from multiple perspectives. It not only helps us understand the big picture more clearly, but also makes us more holistic advocates for our own interests.

But there's an even more expansive perceptual shift that I hope the avatarian community as a whole will take together, and that's moving from a short-term, platform-centric perspective to a long-term view with the greater good as our ideal. This shift away from the typical issue du jour mentality was really brought home for me in "Do We Really Need Standards For Virtual Worlds", a workshop I attended at the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference.

The session began with a discussion on practices and extended in the second half to cataloging the barriers  standing in the way of more widespread virtual world adoption. This work will continue in the fall with a two day mixed reality workshop help physically in Los Angeles and virtually across a number of worlds and platforms. I'll share more details about the upcoming event as they're available.

That Bitch Stole My Retweet

I received a DM recently that accused me of reposting a tweet without giving proper RT attribution. I didn't have a clue about which one I allegedly pilfered, but she unfollowed me so I couldn't DM and figure out what happened. The following essay is from a 2009 post from one of my human counterpart's blogs and sums up my take on the topic:

There’s been discussion recently about “retweet theft". I have a two problems with any gravity attached to that concept. One is philosophical and the other technical.

Philosophical: I admit I sometimes feel a twinge of indignity when a follower posts a link I recently tweeted without giving me the RT credit. Fortunately, I usually remember that buying into any sense of being wronged is an inaccurate and personally destructive apprehension of reality.

If my motivation in sharing something is altruistic, then the fact that the link gets passed along should trump any perceived slight. And since it’s likely that an omission is unintentional, I’m better served by examining my own motivation instead of getting worked up by trying to mind-read the intentions of the perpetrator.

Technical: As the graphic above visualizes, the vast majority of links I run across every day are from Feedly, not my Twitter client. I imagine that few people use Twitter as their primary news monitoring source. The odds are very likely that most tweet-worthy items we find are from other venues.

Just because many of us have access to a Twitter client every waking hour doesn’t mean we have the time and attention to notice every post in our stream. Nor are we obligated to try. The more people we follow, the less likely it is that we’ll keep up with everyone’s posts, and the more likely it is that we’ll unintentionally fail to give someone credit who has previously posted something in our stream that we find in a different source.

And that’s okay.

I Just Don't Get it!

The image above is a snippet from sketchnotes I took at the "You Can't Get There From Here" panel at the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference. This comic-strip section of the larger image is my somewhat frustrated depiction of audience questions and comments from people who "just didn't get" why we'd want to support anonymous/pseudonymous access to the virtual world. The nerve!

I even added this judgmental tweet to a recent Twitter micro-rant:

The correct emotional response to "I just don't get it" is curiosity, not contempt.

As usual, I eventually ended up pointing my pointing finger back at myself. Instead of trying to think about the issue from the perspective of the questioners, I reflexive responded with a visual sneer. Oh well.

In keeping with the theme of this week's posts, an important part of the the way forward in virtual worlds is working to understand the perspectives of others. Especially when there's a strong negative emotional charge attached to an issue. Stories can look very different, depending upon who you choose as the protagonist.

Blue Mars Mobile, Augmented Reality and Virtual Ecosystems

The Blue Mars Mobile team just released another update with some significant enhancements including the mixed reality feature documented in my video. They're doing a stellar job of rapidly cranking out new capabilities that are fun, fast and easy.

At first thought, this topic seems to be a diversion from Monday's pledge to "rise above the ground clutter and think about the virtual world from a more expansive and inclusive perspective." But it is perfect starting point to discuss of how we typically get stuck within conceptual boxes about how avatar-centric software should be developed.

Chances are good that the usual malcontents are going so slam BMM for not conforming to their personal ideal of a VW mobile applications. But although I like to tease Blue Mars for not yet offering a full mobile virtual world solution, I'd much rather have a steady stream of incremental releases than wait a year for a full mobile client. And it would be perfectly fine if they never pushed this product beyond avatar dress-up.

I usually try to avoid using the latest buzzwords, but must admit to a new infatuation with the idea of tech industries as "ecosystems". One key to a healthy ecosystem is diversity. When we rise above any particular platform, stakeholder group or technology what we want to see is a multiplicity of communities of interest moving within a rich and varied environment of diverse micro-ecosystems: large and small; general and hyper-focused; mainstream and alternative; conservative and bleeding edge, etc.

My hope that virtual worlds can avoid the monoculture quasi-monopoly of Facebook and instead progress through the ongoing interplay of hundreds of initiatives competing for every possible niche.

BTW.  Those are not virtual objects. The avatar is dancing around a RL music room.

Waking up at the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds Conference

I don't remember the exact moment it happened, but at some point during the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference I awakened to the deeply provincial nature of my habitual perception of virtual worlds. For all my lip service to the Transworlder ideal over the past few years, my own mental model keeps falling back into the narrative of individual avatar identity created for personal reasons in the current virtual world environment.

Reality is much bigger than that.

We are in the cloud and we are wearing it . . . The computer is an instrument whose music is ideas. The augmented conversation is Jazz. David A. Smith at FCVW 2011

We say, "Music shall fill the air." We never say, "Music shall fill a particular segment of the air." Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage

Early adopters of the horseless carriage didn't have the faintest clue that automobiles would eventually transform almost every aspect of life:  wars; suburbanization; integration; retail chains; woman's liberation; climate change, etc. The conversations we tend to have today in the avatar community about virtual worlds are analogous to early car adopters getting worked up about Henry Ford's decisions on pricing and features for the latest version of the Model T.

From our present vantage point we can clearly see that those kinds of issues about the automobile might have been compelling and necessary in the short run, but didn't really matter in the long run. So over the next few posts, I'm going to try rise above the ground clutter and think about the virtual world from a more expansive and inclusive perspective. Wish me luck!

It's no longer virtual worlds, but a virtual world. Sandy Kearney at FCVW 2011

Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes. Marshall McLuhan

Flickr Set of My Sketchnotes from FCVW Conference Now Active

The Flickr set will hopefully end up with a couple of dozen sketchnotes.

First Sketchnote from Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds Conference

I'll be posting throughout the next three days. You can check back here or at my Flickr Set.

On Holiday Till Wednesday Then Back With Mixed Reality Reporting

I'm taking a short blogging break, but will be back Wednesday as the ultimate embedded reporter from the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds conference. Tech Goddess willing, I'll be posting sketchnotes from workshops and presentations throughout the three day event.

Identity Melt II

Another surrealistic identity piece, Created on an iPad from source images captured in Second Life.

Faking It in Blue Mars Mobile

This was put together entirely on a iPad. The images are screen captures from Blue Mars Mobile. The 3D effect was created with 3D Converter HD. The comic was composed with Comic Life.