Virtual worlds and academic research
I spoke at Penn State’s 2008 IST Graduate Symposium last week on the topic of academic research and virtual worlds.
Having no hands-on experience in academic research, I sought the expertise of Electric Sheep Josh Lifton to prep for the panel. “Liftoff,” as I like to call him, hails from MIT Media Lab and is a rock star of sensor technology and mixed-reality research. If reading dissertations is your thing, check out his paper on Dual Reality.
Here is what we came up with in response to the panel questions.
1. What advantages and affordances do virtual worlds offer the academic researcher?
Virtual worlds provide academic researchers a unique combination of control and real-life situations/subjects. A level playing field can be established in a virtual world that would be otherwise impossible. Everything from social prejudices to lighting conditions are equalized.
There are many psychological, sociological, economic, and artificial intelligence experiments that can benefit from exposure to real people through avatars. In some cases, virtual worlds can allow areas of research to advance beyond a limitation with prior technology. For example, virtual worlds afford artificial intelligence a form of interaction with real people on a level not possible before.
2. How is science taking place in virtual worlds and what are we learning?
By far the most interesting things we’re learning are about people, how they interact with each other and their environment, and how they adapt to new technologies.
Using virtual worlds for physical simulation is still very premature. It seems that much of the current simulation technology is capable of making things “look real” but not necessarily “behave” real.
Stanford computer scientist Ron Fedkiw is an notable example of someone advancing towards true simulation. Ron and his collaborators at Industrial Light and Magic recently won an academy award for fluid simulation in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean.
3. How must science, academia and virtual world technology (and industry) change, evolve and accommodate each other to maximize knowledge gain?
Academics have been doing virtual world-like things for many years, but always on very small scales. They should jump on the chance to use virtual worlds on a large scale and in the wild. An example of such a collaboration is that between the MIT Media Lab and Linden Lab in the formation of the Center for Virtual Life, which is just getting off the ground.
There is much research that virtual worlds could benefit from including:
- Open Standards
- Identity Management
- End User Experience/Usability
- Computer Supported Collaborative Work
- Application Experimentation
Science, academia, and industry benefit when there is objectivity in the work being done. I cautioned the group that everyone needs to maintain some “enthusiastic sobriety” around this technology as we work together to develop it.
February 8th, 2008 16:49
Oh wow - I would have enjoyed that panel!
Academic researchers can also use virtual worlds as places to hold talks, meetings, seminars, panels, workshops, debates or presentations. Most university departments already have regular speaker series and academic researchers often go to conferences to share their findings and to meet others with similar interests.
Virtual academic events are becoming more and more common. I’m interested to see how much they catch on, and if they do in a big way, how they will change the nature of the academy.