V-Worlds

Online virtual avatars residing in new digital worlds, like in the popular Second Life Web-based social immersion game, are changing and perhaps even enriching the reality of the lives we live everyday. Eventually experiments in the virtual world could yield important lessons for the real world, for example, in testing out new ideas in e-government. Even the communities behind open knowledge and open source software are evolving in the ordinary plane of reality while at the same time in a cyberspace of their own creation.

As net access and digital realism evolve non-stop, reality is being supplemented by a parallel universe created by many of the most dynamic actors in the open source and open knowledge communities. Even Ubuntu’s leader, Mark Shuttleworth, finds this new twist in social interaction intriguing and challenging, especially in the cross-over between the virtual and reality sides of the “looking glass.” A particularly interesting example emerged recently when the mantle of leadership of the Creative Commons was handed over, during the 4th anniversary global celebrations of the organization, both in the real world and in cyberspace. New chairperson Joi Ito writes on his blog: “Yesterday Creative Commons celebrated its fourth birthday with parties around the world as well as in Second Life. Larry [Lessig] was in Portugal and I was in Japan so we hooked up with the party in Second Life. Board members Hal [Abelson] and Jimmy [Wales] also joined us there together with a great mix of SL visitors and regulars. In Second Life, Larry took the opportunity to pass me a digital torch as part of a ritual where he handed on the Chairman position to me after four amazing years as the founder-Chairman of Creative Commons.”

“Open source leaders are using open source to evolve themselves in the real world and, as if recursively, in the mirrored virtual worlds of their imagination.”

Once data is multi-channel and ubiquitous and digital interaction becomes multi-dimensional and immediate, new paradigms will inevitably emerge for the conduct of the everyday business of life. New models will map into the idealized versions of old pre-digital models. Complete digital access and integration means everyone can have an audience with the (now virtual) king or, perhaps, executioner, with the guru or charlatan, or with the CEO or janitor.  It’s a kind of Second Life incarnation where v-world supersedes e-world.

When much more powerful versions of virtual reality games like Second Life come online, a compelling application would be to set up a virtual ecosystem with real leaders from government, education and industry. As many constraints as possible could be input into the simulation to reflect the “realities” of the local economy, culture and politics. Then the participants would play the game out with various policy parameters — for example, heavy or light taxation, high or low literacy, different degrees of honesty of public servants or corporate leaders, and various levels of human and other physical resources. The idea would be for the real decision makers to keep careful track of the results and then use the lessons they learn from experimenting in v-government to implement policy and practice in real government. But even more interestingly, the real leaders would be playing out different scenarios with each other in a mutual exploration of give and take that would be both safer, yet potentially more threatening, than real life.

Today online games like Linux-based, Apache-run Second Life are used for entertainment or, at most, as a complement to networks of friends and colleagues in the real world. In the future, however, it may become increasingly difficult for any of us to distinguish between what is virtual and what is real. Like programs that write themselves (see “Quines“), open source leaders are using open source to evolve themselves in the real world and, as if recursively, in the mirrored virtual worlds of their imagination.

What will the open source community imagine next?