Virtual Identity and Real Value

(photo credit: flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3157622308/)

I'm going to open with a disclaimer: this may be a rambling, personal post in the way I imagined "Phasing Grace" would always be - a summary of what's phasing Grace - were it not for my simple insecurities and tendency toward "perfectionism" and some self imposed rule that posts should be deep, well thought out and structured as if they were going to be graded by Mrs. Jones - my 9th grade AP English teacher.

Those things have weighted me down long enough to where I have gone weeks without posting even a salient point that is otherwise lost, all for want of approval or correctness. So if a glimpse into my here and now mind scares you (and by all accounts, it should) then have a look elsewhere for now, although my suspicions are that henceforth, Phasing Grace will rediscover and embrace its original intentions so if you can, please stick around.

So today, the things that phasing Grace are largely but not surprisingly about identity.

Let's start with the first thing that caught my eye, a newly minted Wallace Linden's "conversation starter" post entitled "Will the Real You Please Stand Up". Provocative headline notwithstanding, the post tries to state a seemingly straightforward question: What are the issues attendant to virtual identity management? People have spent entire lifetimes researching this question; I'm sure Wallace didn't expect to work it out in his inaugural post but he certainly touched a nerve of the Second Life Residents, at the time of this post, it has 375 comments and few are of the "nice post, thanks buddy" variety.

Wallace's post appears to place a high value on name spaces as a means by which to traverse a person's digital droppings, and avoids exploring a more meaningful identity construct that extends beyond a mere user name. This is actually somewhat ironic as a precursor to a major Linden Lab announcement just nine days later, the acquisition of Avatars United.

Avatars United is described by M Linden as a Web-based community site designed especially for avatars. My personal Avatars United account was over a year old and primarily inactive because the service afforded very little outside of what established services such as flickr, twitter, plurk, and Facebook provided but the acquisition may prove to be a means to broaden the reach of Second Life on the whole by raising awareness across gaming and virtual world platforms.

But why is it ironic you ask?

Well primarily because for all the goodness Avatars United might bring the to the Second Life ecosphere, it failed to protect one tiny thing that Wallace lauded: your Second Life name space. Avatars United, now prominently promoted as part of Second Life, has no means to verify your valuable Second Life name.

I cannot be anyone other than Grace McDunnough on XStreetSL and there can be only one Grace McDunnough in Second Life, but on Avatars United anyone and everyone can be Grace McDunnough anywhere and everywhere. Consequently, on Avatars United the virtual identity name space Grace McDunnough has been devalued.

Ordinal Malaprop was the first person that made this clearly obvious. Let me state my short opinion: this is bad ju-ju.

Why does this make me crazy?

For Second Life, I selected my name very carefully. Using the clumsy interface that the Lab affords new registrants, I picked Grace first, then looked for something vaguely Scottish or Irish. I wanted Grace to be a uniquely named person with traces of me; I diligently searched Grace McDunnough to see if there were any potential identity collisions. I found two: J. McDunnough, a Canadian Entomologist fascinated with classifying butterflies, and H.I. and Edwina McDunnough in the Coen brother's film Raising Arizona, both of which sort of sealed the deal for me in some weird way.

On February 6, 2006 Grace McDunnough became little more than 15 identity characters on a screen wandering aimlessly down the Orientation path, wearing a purple t-shirt and jeans, talking to a parrot and picking up a torch to light the way to the new world.

Since then, the user name Grace McDunnough has become my digital fingerprint in every virtual space I reside and my identity has real value outside of those 15 characters. I made a steadfast decision that I would not use my "real life" identity in any way to alter, shape, drive, etc. my eventual identity as Grace. I wanted Grace to develop her own street cred. I also chose not to gender bend or role play, but rather simply be the person I could not be in my day-to-day existence - more of an artist than a technologist - more of a philosopher than a executioner - more of an ENTJ than an INTJ.

Every instance, every action, every aspect of the virtual identity Grace McDunnough are important to me and as we move closer to the reality of the networked society they hold immeasurable value. Do not devalue them with a clumsy deployment.

Finally, this week my schedule allowed me time to participate in a great conversation with The Thinkers group in Second Life about identity and reputation. The discussion came on the heels of a post by Extropia DaSilva on Gwyn's blog entitled "Digital People and Anonymous Avatars". The discussion was to be pivoted on Scope Cleaver and his work in Second Life as a builder and what it takes to develop an online reputation. This strikes a deep chord for me because if it were not for Second Life, the music of Grace McDunnough would never be heard.

The most interesting and perhaps the most troubling part of the discussion was about how the work of a person that does not provide offline credentials holds little to no value. So beyond trust, which is another ongoing debate among scholars, a person's work in a virtual space may actually be of less value than someone who holds real life credentials.

To me, this will stifle any hope of realizing any of the new economic potential outlined in Yochai Benkler's book "The Wealth of Networks" simply because the opportunities for people to participate are cut off by the very limitations we are trying to supersede.

As a 4th year rez day approaches I am even more keenly aware and appreciative of the power, the nature and the delicate intricacies of digital identity. In fact, I may blurred in my thinking because this topic is so passionately appealing to me but I might go so far as to suggest the following:

The single most unappreciated element of Second Life is identity because in the end, a virtual identity is a commodity with tangible value.

That perspective, which may be solely my own, is the lens through which I have viewed my entire existence within Second Life. It's how I evaluate what Linden Lab does or doesn't do, it's how I process the events that occur and to some extent it is how I (and maybe others) start evaluate my self worth.

What do you think?
Is the fluff over Avatars United without merit?
Does your identity have value?
Do real life credentials increase the value of your work online?


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Weblin to Second Life: Meaningful Interoperability

Weblin's recent announcement that you can transform your Second Life avatar into a weblin for travels along the web is a fantastic example of meaningful and relevant interoperability between virtual worlds.

Early adopter Second Lifers have already adopted weblins as a means by which to chat and socialize outside of the virtual world of Second Life, whether it's attending Malburns and Tara's brilliant Metaverse Week in Review show, or just catching up while the grid is down.

From Venture Beat: Normally, you’d create your own Weblin avatar. But now Weblin has a “photo booth” within the Weblin House space within Second Life. Users enter the photo booth with their avatars. The avatars are then captured using Weblin’s software and recreated in the Weblin universe.

It’s essentially like exporting a character from one game to another. The Weblin characters are smaller than actual Second Life characters. They walk around at the bottom of a screen so they don’t obscure the user’s view of the web page. Linden Lab actively supports the teleportation application. The service is free.


[Cross posted from graceified]

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Identity Verification = Trust ?

I took a brief hiatus from Second Life and blogging in general, and the next time I will follow blogger etiquette and post a "gone fishing" sign. It was kind of everyone who inquired politely about my well being, but when I got a worried email from my dad today saying in part ".. and there's no activity on the web. You OK?" I decided it was well past time to return. (And by the way, Dad - you've got mail.)

I had planned a detailed post about my experience with Burning Life, but as that event unfolded I lost most of my enthusiasm for it and all of what I wanted to say which was largely unfavorable. Instead, there have been a few things lingering in my head and they are more relevant as we approach the Virtual Worlds 2007 Conference and Expo. The first is Identity Verification and what it means. I know it's a relatively old topic in Second Life time, but it's weighed heavily on my mind since a recent interaction, so out it comes.

When Linden Lab first introduced the intent to deploy an identity verification system (IDV), I skimmed over it thinking it was akin to establishing a MPAA-like ratings system for content. If you have a rating system and intend to enforce it, you have to have some form of verification and that made sense. In fact, large portions of the initial Linden Lab reasoning in the first, second and third blog posts alluded to segmentation of and access to rated content.

I largely ignored the system and the beta trial as I have no need, desire or intent to explore the vastness of the Second Life Adult Content (defined as explicitly sexual or excessively violent). However, Robin Linden's blog post and a personal experience has made me rethink the true intent and extent of "verification".

Robin starts her post with an interesting statement:

Trust is the foundation of any community. And one cornerstone of trust is identity. You’ve got to know something about the person you are dealing with before you can trust them. Knowing who to trust in an online environment presents unique challenges. Traditionally Second Life users have based their trust on relationships built over time, and often on some basic verification such as ‘Payment Info on File’.

This is a subtle introduction to the underlying message, which is that the focus of the verification system to that of a "trust", not simply age identity.

The IDV system aims to deliver two things. First, for Residents, it gives them the chance to independently verify certain aspects of their identity (their name, age, location and sex for instance) if they choose to. This will help establish trust by removing a layer of anonymity for those they interact with. It’s much easier to trust someone who puts their name behind their words and actions.

The second benefit of the IDV system is to help land owners and content publishers be sure that minors do not get access to inappropriate material. ... ]

What is so interesting about these statements? It is an attempt to suggest that the institution of IDV will somehow introduce a new layer of "trust" into the community.

Anyone that has spent any reasonable amount of time participating in on line communities knows that trust has to be earned over time, it is not merely a factor of your name, age, sex, or location; it's about who you are and what you contribute in the context of the community. I would argue that if you start with a person's age, sex, location as a basis for trust you are more apt to be fooled or lulled into some false sense of security by a "verification" tag. Even worse, the methods by which Linden intends to execute this verification are weak, based on publicly available information and are fraught with opportunities to be scammed. If you want a good treatise on IDV and how it really translates to liability transfer and culpable deniability rather than trust, read Gwyn's post "I am who I am". I will summarize the key point: IDV does not assure your avatar is who you say you are, it merely indicates that the data you provide to Integrity matches data that is publicly available.

The impact of IDV hit me more directly in a recent group event. In the context of the group discussion, the leader suggested that it would be "of benefit" to the group if everyone introduced themselves, telling everyone what they do in Second Life and who they are and what they do in real life, over the voice system. It was the first time I'd seen such a request, and it was not a heavy handed "tell us or you're out", but it was presented in the context of the discussion as a perfectly reasonable request and expectation.

I shared my information, after which I was mildly amused that I was presented with five new friend requests. This was in balance with the sixth interaction which was a private IM from someone I had not met before. This person wanted me to restate my real name. I obliged and the reply was loosely "I don't trust people here and I fully endorse Linden's Identity Verification system. I need to know you are who you say you are. Here's my blog link, you can read it and friend me afterward if you think that is worthwhile." I wasn't sure how to respond, other than "Are you KIDDING me?" so thanks to me mum, I replied that I understood and have a nice day.

Of course I checked the individual's blog, which was actually a web site (when did every form of rendered html become a blog?) and from there I deduced that this was most likely this person's first online community experience. The trouble is, this person and many other "newbies" that read the Linden Lab posts on IDV believes that "verification" in the IDV acronym equates to trust and a new business utopia as described by Benjamin Duranske in this post . I can assure you, it does not.

Trust is critically important, but it is based on community interactions. If you are reading this, you are probably aware that for enterprise systems such as eBay and Amazon and even news and information sites, rating systems implemented to work within the community norms are successful. Ratings serve as their own form of verification. I don't know the eBay seller i_can_has_cheeseburger (fictional example) but they have executed 2,000 transactions over the last 12 months and have zero negative comments from buyers. Therefore, within the eBay community I *trust* them and will do business with them. Do I care about their age, sex, location?

Do the community norms of the Second Life population endorse anonymous third party systems even if they *promise* not to store any personally identifiable information? No, not so much. Second Lifers build trusted networks by participating in communities of practice (CoP). Without a generalized and publicly viewable rating system, an individual's contributions are locked within the confines of that CoP trusted network and cannot be exposed as an indicator of reputation and therefore implied trust.

In a short-sighted decision this spring, Linden Lab removed the rating system this year because "the ratings system has become less and less useful" when in fact it was merely poorly designed from both a technical architectural and a social architecture perspective. This decision to dump the rating system left the community without this critical tool. Linden suggested adopting other community systems - RatePoint, TrustNet, Ban Link, Sloog.org, Real Reputations, and SLicr - but not surprisingly, none have risen to the challenge because the community looks to Linden Lab to provide the basic tools to function as a community. Once the IDV system is in place, the community will have to keep looking.
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Virtual Trust in Your Second Life

In my early discussions about the power of the Second Life platform, I discussed what I called "unmediated conversation". Unmediated, in this case, by the real life factors that influence our face to face human interactions. I argued that in a medium where you could be anything, the infamous three second "first impression" rule had to be violated in some way, allowing for a richer, more meaningful initial engagement that transcended appearance and therefore led to deeper relationships.

After all, in a place where one could be any shape, thing, sex, species, etc. why would we allow ourselves to draw conclusions about the person behind the pixels in a mere three seconds simply based on their virtual manifestation? Did I mention that I *assumed* all of this?

This week my good friend DrFran Babcock started to dispel some of the myths I'd formed in my own mind in her Mental Health Missives podcast. DrFran highlights a study by Kristine L. Nowak and Christian Rauh published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication entitled "Choose your ‘buddy icon’ carefully: The influence of avatar androgyny, anthropomorphism and credibility in online interactions". The study hypothesis calls my "unmediated conversation" assertion to task:

The fact that we can separate the avatar from the behavior allows an exploration of the extent to which this reliance on visible information in the perception process is due to the lack of conscious control and the relative stability of the body. Perceivers know that the avatar is consciously chosen, easy to change, and not stable. Therefore, if people rely more on a person’s behavior than on the visual information (avatar) when online, it is likely that people rely on characteristics of the offline body due to its stability and the fact that it is beyond conscious control. However, if the characteristics of the avatar have a stronger effect on the online person perception process than behavior, this implies that people rely on visual characteristics for some other reason.

I know, read it again .. it will make sense. Where do academics learn to write? We digress.

The researchers conducted a survey and an experiment. The survey was used to determine how people perceive a group of 30 avatars in static context created from 3D models using Poser 5 for human and 3D Studio Max for the non-human avatars; those results were used to base the selection of a stimulus for the experiment. The participants evaluated the avatars in terms of their androgyny, anthropomorphism, credibility, homophily, attraction, and the likelihood they would choose them during an interaction. Here are the avatar mug shots.

As you can see there is a variety of human male and female as well as non-human avatars. It's not quite as diverse as that which we encounter in Second Life, but it representative set.

The results from the report Conclusion:

Avatars that were more anthropomorphic were perceived to be more attractive and credible, and people were more likely to choose to be represented by them. The strongest predictor of these variables, however, was the degree of masculinity or femininity (lack of androgyny) of an avatar. Further, those images with strong gender indications (either more masculine or more feminine) were perceived as more anthropomorphic than images (whether human or not) without strong indications of gender. These results also support the claim that people anthropomorphize anything they encounter (Reeves & Nass, 1996), even bottles and hammers, to some degree.

Further, while all images have some level of anthropomorphism, not all images are either feminine or masculine. Some images are both masculine and feminine and others are neither. All things being equal, more anthropomorphic or less androgynous avatars are more attractive, credible, and homophilous, perhaps because androgyny and low anthropomorphism increase uncertainty. These results are consistent with the suggestion that people have higher expectations of anthropomorphic avatars and that there will be consequences for violating these expectations (Garau et al., 2003; Slater & Steed, 2002). The results suggest that less androgynous (more masculine or feminine) avatars may also carry higher expectations.

Finally, it seems that the characteristics of an avatar may at times provide useful, and relatively accurate, information about the person it represents. Although a small percentage of subjects reported a preference for androgynous avatars, a majority reported a preference for avatars that were 'like' them, at least in terms of gender. This suggests that users may also want to match other characteristics such as hair color and race, perhaps sexual orientation, or even hobbies. This means that designers should continue to provide a wide variety of choices. This would not only increase user satisfaction, but could also provide useful information about people in online interactions. Finally, providing minorities, such as Hispanic and African Americans, choices of avatars that match their ethnicity or race may make them feel more comfortable and may also help to prevent marginalizing minorities and other traditionally disenfranchized groups in online environments by making them obvious, visible participants.

I know what you are thinking "So much for your unmediated conversation, Grace." Not so fast, notice that this study was conducted statically. In other words, there was little context nor was there interaction.

I strongly maintain that the three second first impression is largely influenced by the context of the interaction. For example, suppose you are wandering around Second Life and out of the blue you get an instant message from someone you don't know. "Hi Grace". (Yes, I know you aren't Grace, please play along.) What do you do? Do you respond quickly and openly? Do you check the avatar's profile, quickly scanning for hints? Do you just ignore it?

Now consider the next scenario. You teleport into a crowded live music venue where you know no one. Out of the morass, someone says "Hi Grace". Now what do you do? Do you react differently?

Finally, consider the following; you are wandering through the SL Botanical Gardens and you stumble upon an infinitely peaceful setting that is empty, minus a brightly colored dwarf dangling his feet in the water and whispering to the fish. He looks up and says "Hi Grace". Well?

This goes to the argument of whether virtual worlds have to be 3D. The answer is of course no, unless you want to capitalize on the immersive and contextual experience.

What do you think?
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