One of the talking points that people often raise in their resistance to the idea of Virtual Worlds is that the people in Virtual Worlds do not have any physical presence. This in turn leads to a host of derivative complaints. You cannot touch people. You cannot see their facial expressions. You cannot hug your friends or loved ones.You cannot trust someone if you cannot look them in the eye. And, so on.
There are three problems with this line of reasoning. First, it is a distinction between Virtual Words and physical presence that is used as a wedge issue simply because it is a distinction rather than a real concern. Second, upon reflection, it is probably not a real concern. And, third, even if it were an issue, the evolution of technology would more than likely eliminate it. It is like saying that I don't like people who are not from the United States because they don't speak English. First, it is probably not really true. Second, if it were true, it probably wouldn't be as big of a problem as I am making it out to be. And, third, the evolution of translation software has made different languages less of a problem than it used to be. So, let's look at these counter arguments individually in more detail.
While physical presence is a distinction between Virtual Worlds and the physical world, one has to ask how important this distinction really is. Do you really want to touch people that badly? I would cautiously suggest that if I were to start touching my students, I would have a much bigger problem than this one of trying to overcome resistance to Virtual Worlds. Touching is way over rated. Next time you go to the grocery store, I would encourage you to hug the cashier and see how well that works out. Or, next time you get pulled over for a traffic ticket, get out of your car and put your arm around the person writing the ticket. I am not saying that there is no circumstance in which touching is a good thing. I am just saying that its importance as a wedge issue between virtual and physical worlds in our daily affairs is vastly overrated.
Second, physical presence is not as big of a deal as most people claim. Back in the days of limited mobility people wanted to know the families of people that they married. This was considered a critical point. But, in today's more mobile society, more and more people marry significant others with little concern for their family background. It used to matter was town you came from and was school you went to. This is all rapidly eroding with the increasing mobility of society. Similarly, we used to think it was important to know about the people around us. But, in our modern age of personal privacy we have had to learn to get along without that information. Similarly, we believe that we need to see people faces, look them in the eye, and watch their body language in order to understand what they are saying and whether or not we can trust them. This is probably a similar convention which will evaporate over time.
Third, technology over time will advance so some of the information we seek from presence may eventually become available.Here are two examples. First, with the staggering amount of information available on the Web, it might be possible to find out way more about the people with whom we are interacting that we could even find out by just talking to them face to face. And just like the way people on dating sites who won't provide a picture are ignored, we might just choose to ignore people for whom there isn't a sufficient amount of information online. Pursing the dating site analogy further, most people are skeptical of others who post pictures that are clearly decades old. If people avatars do no look like them, we might just shy away from them. Finally, as digital video technology advances we might be able to project real time facial expressions on avatars. So, no only will you be able to look them in the eye and see facial expressions in real time, but you can record them, watch the expressions over and over again at your leisure, and even run them through analytical software to see if they were telling the truth.
Suddenly, the physical world, where interactions are dicey at best, doesn't look so good any more.
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