Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The importance of putting a “face” to networked communication plays itself out
along several lines of technical development, information visualization, and human
communication interests. I relate in the following section the history of twenty years of
virtual world design in order to point out that this is not the first time we have had a go
at networked worlds. However, these spaces have combined with several other factors
to make graphical real-time multiuser spaces not new but
newly important
.
We see at this time a shift in real-time communication media that we have not wit-
nessed since the advent of the telephone. I discuss here two phases of virtual world
development and use in order to decode what is happening currently in pervasive net-
worked media. The first period I discuss, which includes text-based worlds as well as
the early graphical ones, essentially spans 1979 through 1991, when the World Wide
Web launched. The second period I address, 1995 to the present, includes the major in-
novations in graphical web. In phase one, we see primarily design, use, and adoption
of real-time multiuser platforms among researchers and niche communities. In phase
two, the technical changes as well as the cultural changes in network use have created
a context for an emergent popular adoption of virtual world platforms.
Walled Gardens and Other Rare Flowers
In 1979, one of the nascent characteristics of early virtual worlds was that they func-
tioned essentially as closed universes. To visit was to take a vacation from the real
world and enter a walled garden. A walled garden describes both a fantasyland where
real-world rules and consequences do not come into play and a hermetic space that is
not influenced by external factors. For example, writer C. S. Lewis's character Lucy
may be a princess in the kingdom of Narnia, but she remains just a little girl on the
other side of the magic wardrobe, in real life. Historically as a society, we have found a
great many valuable uses for walled garden experiences, particularly for children. They
often create the space for us to explore new roles (a reigning princess as opposed to a
powerless little girl), even as they offer a safety net of little or no consequence for our
actions.
We have begun to exchange closed worlds for open, and walled gardens for porous
nets. In the past thirty-some years, I see an evolution in virtual worlds away from insu-
lar experiences and toward persistent networked relationships. That evolution plays out
in the design of applications as well as in the engagement of platforms.
