Rondayview

Have you been THERE?

The technology of interactive virtual worlds has progressed far beyond the MUDs of the early 1990s: just have a look at There and Second Life. Your avatar can lay on the beach, play gravity-defying sports not possible in the real world, get married, attend parties; an entire lifetime of activities and modes of interaction are available. And there's little question that within another generation or two, the technology of virtual social gatherings will have progressed to a point where these presently impressive offerings look like nothing more than bad IM clients. There's no question it's coming. The information age is moving us toward a society that interacts more in virtual spaces than in real ones.

Is this a good thing?

For a while now I've been personally interested in the effects that increasing virtual interaction are having on physical society. When you begin to research the topic, what you find is that there's not much data yet. There are a few studies that claim that computer-to-computer as opposed to face-to-face communication is damaging the interpersonal structure of society as a whole, and yet others that claim that it's actually contributing to increased and better communication. I've decided that it's too soon to form any conclusions, the jury will have to remain out for another decade or so before any real trends can be positively identified, but there's one thing that concerns me: virtual interaction has an addictive quality that physical interaction seems to lack.

Even when virtual worlds were simple text interfaces like MUDs, I observed several otherwise intelligent and social people become so addicted to their virtual selves that they put aside all other aspects of their life, even eating and sleeping! When I was teaching at Harding University, I had good students--A+ honors level students--end up dropping my computer science classes because they'd let their studies and everything else go in favor of "living" online. Now, the attraction of the current generation of virtual worlds is orders of magnitude beyond those early text versions, and the addictive quality has increased right along with the technology.

The social and psychological and philosopical questions are interesting to say the least. For example, what compels a person to spend $19.99 a month and then dozens or hundreds of hours in a week--that's real dollars and real time-- "building" a virtual house for their avatar to "live" in, while the whole time ignoring friends and family and even basic needs such as food? The answers to questions like these are complex and generalizations will be difficult, but there's no question in my mind that technology is the new drug. Sometimes it scares me to think where society could be headed.

Are we headed toward a society where more of us live THERE than HERE?