Phasing Grace | Social Architecture and Virtual Worlds

Im probably a bit biased with my view here as im o...

2009-08-08T16:04:39.772-04:00

Im probably a bit biased with my view here as im obviously looking into SL cemetery's having recently lost a dear SL friend...but im surprised theres not a free sim (no charge)type place so SL family members that have passed away could be remembered,by all means have a donation jar,im sure those that have laid people to rest there would be more than willing to donate each time they visited...but charging for rent of a headstone seems a bit "off" to me,just my opinion not sure how others feel about it....would like to hear your thoughts people...thx

Thought-provoking as ever, Grace. Seeing the SPE e...

2008-09-03T18:40:00.000-04:00

Thought-provoking as ever, Grace. Seeing the SPE experiment from the vantage point of a SL resident, the results are hardly surprising. I agree that a sceptical stance should be obviously adopted (ie. "why only middle class college students?"... etc.), but my gut feeling (and so many research experiments come from an initial "gut feeling" put to the scientific method to see if it proves correct) is that the results would not be very different.

One thing, though, would be interesting to test. Eveline suggests that "age" might be a factor conditioning the experiment. I'd replace it with "maturity". Certainly age relates to maturity, but I've (sadly) seen too many examples of people who are totally immature at 40 or 50 — and examples like Katharine Berry with 15 or so who are incredibly mature.

Hey Grace, congrats on being voted the featured bl...

2008-08-31T22:25:00.000-04:00

Hey Grace, congrats on being voted the featured blog at the Blogger's Hut on ISTE Island for the month of September. Your RSS feed will be displayed in the hut for quick display of your headlines and visitors will be able to visit your blog with a quick click.

I've been a fan of yours for a while. Thanks for the thoughtful shareouts...

The SLurl to the hut is http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/18/130/23/

$15 a day to have my mind messed with?Where do I s...

2008-08-06T09:55:00.000-04:00

$15 a day to have my mind messed with?

Where do I sign up?

Zimbardo speaks volumes on immersion and abuse of authority roles, but I still think that the Harry Harlow experiments on the social isolation of rhesus monkeys are the go-to authority on SL behavior.

One more thing.... maybe it would be interesting t...

2008-08-03T10:06:00.000-04:00

One more thing.... maybe it would be interesting to do a short experiment of our own. Let's go to the SL prison for a week or two and roleplay. Clothes, guards, no tping out of the prison..... then we can introspect a bit and talk....
Anybody?

This is an interesting discussion that opens so ma...

2008-08-03T10:04:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting discussion that opens so many questions....

While I generally do agree that environment shapes us, it is important to have in mind the specific environment iof SPE, which has a significant amount of violence and domination. Those are even amplified with our (and participant's) precognitions about prisons. We all saw enough movies, read stories etc. about prisons so it is quite easy to make them alive and present in the first minute spent in such an environment.

Talk to your friends (or maybe you have the experience first hand) who were serving in the army in peace. (I'd like to exclude war situations cause those are too intensive and changes us all without exception.) They will all witness their changes of behaviour and perception of the world around them. That extends to changing their personal value system as well. All of the few I have talked about this stressed inability to get out of army camp when they wish, clothes and daily schedule (waking up, eating) and presence of authority (higher ranks) as most influencing factors on their feelings and behaviour. It seems that those restrictive factors are very "helpful" in creating immersion.

While I believe that opposite environments, those that give more freedom than regular life (like SL) are also affecting the behaviour and the perception of the world through immersion, they lack the strength of closed and violent systems. Side question that pop-ups here is the SL's so popular domination games.

Anyway, idea of using a virtual world in prisons tickles my mind. There are two possible benefits that comes to mind. One is making sentence easier to bear. Having SL (or any derivative) for prisoners might do a great thing to lower the level of violence in prisons, to make that time more creative and socialy valuable etc... Other is rehabilitation. Is it possible to have a good rehabilitation by using a virtual world? Sure, it depends on the person itself, crime that was done etc but in general? Would creating and activly participating in a society of the VW affect its participants to become social beings that will successfully join the free part of the meatspace after the process?

Hi Grace. Interesting post. A couple of thoughts o...

2008-08-03T04:24:00.000-04:00

Hi Grace. Interesting post. A couple of thoughts occur just quickly. First - this describes a pretty heterogeneous group. Middle class male college students? How many of them will have developed enough identity and confidence to resist (even a fictional) "consensual reality"? Not many. I'm 53, and I'm constantly poking and prodding what I see as herd behavior inworld, from jargon to consensual acceptance of roleplay. A lot of that kind of lemming-ism is age-related, including fashionable "individualism", which can be just as herdlike as anything else. Or "irony". Avatar, please...

The second thought is that immersibility seems to me to be variable, both by depth and susceptibility for a given person, and by subject matter likewise. After a prolonged development period (about four minutes), I developed a highly sophisticated screening test for immersibility, namely, the "Nixdorf One-cat Lap Test". This involves putting a pixel cat (Zooby, calico) in an avatar's pixel lap, and then asking the "typist" for a description of her inner emotional response. Often quite positive, however by and large gender-specific, with males responding (corrected for age variation) more significantly to being handed a sniper rifle. (/me grins)

Lastly, it's worth remembering that sl comprises, largely, a "self-selected population". These are mmo people, roleplayers, often very experienced in self-immersion already. Lots of people taken randomly from the population might not immerse at all.

Just some thoughts. Eveline Nixdorf.

Soph,I wasn't taking exception, or at least I didn...

2008-08-02T22:46:00.000-04:00

Soph,

I wasn't taking exception, or at least I didn't think I was; I apologize that I gave you that impression. I was trying to understand what part I "got backwards" when in fact we agree if not on specific citations, at least on principle.

I mentioned fear in response to your last sentence about shutting down due to fear.

I understand your point about prisons, and I should said more clearly in the post that my parallel to SPE was not specifically about the prisoner-guard effect, but toward the shaping of our behavior by situational constructs. That is perhaps where we misunderstood each other.

We are in violent agreement that we should in fact endeavor to create environments that favor positive outcomes, which is your point about the system - yes?

I would also encourage us to be be acutely aware of what can be the perils of immersion - since despite the best intentions my "positive experience" may not be yours - and in the case of circumstances that are presented akin to SE, raise the #416 in ourselves and do something about it.

Grace - I'm not sure what you're taking exception ...

2008-08-02T21:16:00.000-04:00

Grace - I'm not sure what you're taking exception to. My comments weren't about fear.

You said "The effect demonstrated by the SPE is the power of Second Life, the enormity of what we can become, good or bad, when we allow ourselves to be fully consumed - visually and audibly immersed - in the environment."

"The environment" isn't neutral: not in SL, not in the Milgrim experiment, not in the atomic. It's constructed, and constructed to favor some outcomes over others.

A prison is constructed to favor extreme hierarchy, violence and degradation. SL is constructed to favor identity experimentation and creative expression.

That doesn't *guarantee* outcomes, as Prisoner 416 demonstrates. And so, your point about individual choice is well taken.

What my comment was attempting to do was to look at the system, rather than the individual. Since, as you said, we *can* create powerfully immersive systems, I suggest that we create and maintain ones that favor positive outcomes.

If there's something in that you find objectionable, or a significant misunderstanding of your post, please let me know.

Soph,Thanks for your comments. The Milgrim experi...

2008-08-02T20:00:00.000-04:00

Soph,

Thanks for your comments. The Milgrim experiment (conducted 10 years before SPE) was about willingness to obey a prescribed authoritative figure, this post is not. This post is about the power of immersive and situational environments, however they may be structured.

I made no reference to constraints or artificial power impositions in SL, rather I excluded them:
"I have read numerous criticisms of SPE and the findings, but what has struck me most is the parallel we can draw to our Second Life® experiences - not by the power equation, although some may argue that Linden Lab is walking a fine line in that regard - but by our ability to distinguish and effectively respond to situational influences."

This post is not about fear, but about approaching this space consciously and deliberately, while understanding that situational influences have a power that can be transformative. How we chose make those transformations depends upon our awareness and in many cases, sheer cognitive fortitude.

If I missed making that point clear, please help me find places to clarify it since it is the crux of the post.

Grace - this is brilliant, and provocative, but I ...

2008-08-02T18:59:00.000-04:00

Grace - this is brilliant, and provocative, but I think you've gotten it exactly backwards.

The principle of the Milgrim experiment was to see how people behaved in an artificial world with more constraints than in the world they came from: it took the artificial scarcities, enforced hierarchies and limited identities of the atomic, and exaggerated them.

SL matters because it does the opposite: it's a space where we're freer, where those hierarchies and scarcities have been removed.

Some people's prisons are internal: they bring them with them wherever they go. And so we see griefing, camping, morals police, and the like from people afraid of being free.

But for the rest of us, the "experiment" has been to see who we are and what we do when artificial constraints are taken away.

What did *you* do? What have so many thousands done?

Lived freely, created beauty.

Those are *our* experimental results.

Now, knowing this, what will we make of our worlds, digital and atomic alike? Will we expand the "experiment" or shut it down from fear of what we've seen?

Grace- unfortunately this is not at all my area of...

2008-08-02T16:01:00.000-04:00

Grace- unfortunately this is not at all my area of expertise. If it was, I would definitely pursue trying to implement it to test it out. You are right that it is fascinating on so many levels.

And along the lines of similarities to literature, I have to admit that Second Life brings to mind several pieces of literature - agree with Dizzy: Lord of the Flies, along with Atlas Shrugged.

sometimes I just see Lord of the Flies

2008-08-02T14:15:00.000-04:00

sometimes I just see Lord of the Flies

prenoir, Thanks for sharing your remarkable idea; ...

2008-08-02T13:43:00.000-04:00

prenoir,
Thanks for sharing your remarkable idea; it's complex and intriguing on many levels.

I am no expert, but if you have any way of moving it forward, I'd be happy to lend a hand.

Grace,Your blog brings to mind an idea that I have...

2008-08-02T13:30:00.000-04:00

Grace,
Your blog brings to mind an idea that I have been thinking about for some time. I too have noticed that people immersed in a virtual world will allow that world to shape their personalities and viewpoints - much in the same way that this happens when someone in real life becomes immersed in certain group/culture.

So, I started to wonder if it would be a good idea for prisons to create a closed virtual world using something like the open sim technology and then populate and set up that world to be a place where everyone displays the type of proper behavior, actions, activities, etc. that we expect people in the real world to have. Then set up specific times in which prisoners would be expected to enter that world and interact with its inhabitants. If the prisoner displayed improper behavior, he would then be instructed by the inhabitants in how he/she could be acting instead. Then after so many months of inhabiting a world in which everyone behaves this way, perhaps the prisoner would learn the type of behavior expected of him/her in real society. Much in the same way the test group in this experiment "became" the person in that world.

Sometimes I think prisoners fall into their criminal world and element because they have traveled in that section of society so long they truly believe the way they act is ok/normal and also they have not learned how they really should behave. I realize this does not apply to all, but for those that are in crime due to this, I wonder if modifying their behavior through interactions in a virtual world might be an idea worth pursuing.

somehow "don't be a dick" and "don't be an ass" ha...

2008-07-29T02:56:00.000-04:00

somehow "don't be a dick" and "don't be an ass" have both served me well as guides to social behavior..

except in the bedroom.

Great post Grace!

For all the fascination we have with the power of ...

2008-07-22T14:59:00.001-04:00

For all the fascination we have with the power of technology, I have come to believe ultimately it is what is in our hearts that determines the uses and the impact

Hi! M here. Calling Grace now.

2008-07-10T20:03:00.000-04:00

Hi! M here. Calling Grace now.

wow...Grace for CEO? your votes folks?

2008-07-10T20:02:00.000-04:00

wow...Grace for CEO? your votes folks?

Looks like 'M' reads your blog and responded!

2008-07-10T04:00:00.000-04:00

Looks like 'M' reads your blog and responded!

Looks like 'M' listened to you!

2008-07-10T03:59:00.000-04:00

Looks like 'M' listened to you!

@dandellion I don't know the last time you went t...

2008-06-09T19:04:00.000-04:00

@dandellion I don't know the last time you went through the registration process, but I did recently, six different times before I wrote this post and only once was there a non-newb human there to greet me at Orientation. A single human, not armies of roaming mentors, eager to help. Sadly, at that particular juncture although there were only about 15 of us on OI, that human was able to answer questions from one person at a time. Actually, that is an assumption since they never once answered me. To make matters worse, the HUD was not working and we were all moving from station to station saying "hello" and "help" to see if we could at least pass the chat station. So no, a human was not helpful nor was that even the best solution at that point. A bot may have at least picked up on the consistent error messages from the HUD and alerted a human to the problem that was affecting far more than just one person. Human to human doesn't scale very well - ask any experienced customer service manager.

I agree that the UI needs work, what I don't agree is that will improve the first hour experience nor do I think they can fix it right now because frankly, LL does not have enough data on 1) the first hour and 2) the hour right after that and 3) 40+ hours after that. Bots, at east in the first hour help gather that routine data about what is confusing, what gets asked, etc. For the remainder, some serious ethnographic research is required.

Bots sounds nice, but they are not a solution. As ...

2008-06-09T17:54:00.000-04:00

Bots sounds nice, but they are not a solution. As you probably know, there are mentors all over the Orientation and Help Islands. And they have real humans behind them, which makes them more communicative than bots. First, mentors are usually bored so they are willing to talk more, and then, they are more intelligent and will react much better to questions made by noobs. If you've ever heard somebody trying to ask you someting in bad english about something so new as SL can be you know what level of decyphering is needed sometimes on OI.

@Grace : I just went to BraveNewBot dot com and wa...

2008-05-31T23:02:00.000-04:00

@Grace : I just went to BraveNewBot dot com and watched whatever the most recent thing there was. If they have some wonderfuller thing that isn't available yet, I haven't seen it. :)

Perhaps our main disagreement is about to what extent Orientation Island is in fact a controlled environment in which people are doing structured exercises. Given that everyone who comes in new to SL has their own set of ideas about what they're doing there and what it's all about, and that one of the things that the environment contains is other newborns :) I don't think it's likely to qualify for either of those categories.

But okay, let me try the other side. If we believe there are maybe two dozen things that the majority of newborns are likely to want to know about, we could have a team write down the top ten ways of referring to each of those two dozen things, and write up a paragraph of good information about each of the things (and update them weekly or as needed).

Then we could hook up the mentor-bots to deliver the appropriate paragraph upon recognizing someone referring to one of the things.

That might or might not actually be useful; it would be fun to see an empirical test. Anyone attempting to have an actual conversation with one of these 'bots would find out instantly that it's not possible, but maybe that's okay.

Do you think we have enough technology in natural language understanding and AI to do significantly more than that very simple system? That's where my skepticism is focused; I'm pretty sure we don't...

Interesting article, an well thought trough (I lik...

2008-05-31T05:47:00.000-04:00

Interesting article, an well thought trough (I liked the scenario), but I find it hard to imagine 'the paperclip approach' (MS Office) would help new people find what they want in Second Life. It's not fixing the interface at all, its just providing a tutorial to understand an uninviting and bad interface. As a user generated solutions its interesting, I expect a whole lot better/more from LL to build something truly accessible.

If bots are to be used I think its more likely to see something like static 'NPC' style such as in MMORPG's - introducing a logical, perhaps even fun experience of getting to know the drills of an interface that should still a lot better.