I was just having a discussion with a colleague concerning on-line communities and virtual worlds. I had come across a service called Kaneva, a combination MySpace and Second Life. It's a very active on-line community. However, our discussion focused on the idea that there is a fundamental paradigm shift occurring in our society. More and more people are living a larger portion of their lives within these on-line communities. Since I deal so much with "virtual life" between managing on-line databases, distance reference and VBI World (in activeworlds.com's education universe) I have had the privlege to see more and more of this shift occurring, probably far more than the average librarian.
It's fascinating! My job has allowed me to have relationships with people from all over the world. It's not unusual for me to get an email on an IM from Africa or Hong Kong, regarding access to one of our library's resources or a reference question. Eastern University is an international school. I have had the opportunity to share part of my business and personal life with the faculty and students that I will never meet in person.
However, 3-D virtual worlds take the socialization offered via email, listservs discussion groups to a new level. Services such as Activeworlds, Second Life and There offer something more. The virtual environments are places. The avatars that we use are representations of real people.
You might say that's obvious. However I feel that the psychological (and I am no psychologist) and sociological ramifications are huge. In the real world we associate people with places and appearances. We are doing the same sort of thing in 3-D virtual worlds, especially in those services which offer highly customizable environments and avatars.
Much of this has been discussed in Shirley Turkle's
Life on the Screen. On her website (
http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/) there is a poignant passage from her book:
RL is just one more window, and it's usually not my best one." These are the words of a college student who considers the worlds he inhabits through his computer as real as RL--real life. He's talking about the time he spends "being" four different characters in three different MUDs--multi-user domains--as well as the time he spends doing his homework on the computer. As he sees it, he splits his mind and "turns on one part" and then another as he cycles from window to window on his screen. The computer and the Internet allow him to explore different aspects of himself. As another user puts it, "You are who you pretend to be." (http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/Life-on-the-Screen.html)As 3-D virtual world representations, whether social or strictly gaming worlds, become more realistic will "RL --real life" change? How will this affect our society? How will this affect the way we deal with our patrons? Shouldn't we seriously begin to look at this as a fundamental paradigm shift and begin to the ask hard questions concerning the way people use the services that we deliver?
What character will we choose to be? We make the choice by our choice of services. Will the character we choose, pretend that change is not really happening?
