Virtual Worlds: The New Medium for the 21st Century

… as powerful as the combination of media from

the 19th Century that drove life in the 20th…

Projecting into Virtual Worldscirca 25,000 BCE

Projecting virtual worldsThrough The Lanterna Magika (1671)

A shared experience: the Cinema replaced the earlier

Kinetoscope Parlors

So where did (digital) virtual worlds come from?We first learned to play together in a digital world

in Spacewar! in 1962 (on a PDP-1)

…and in 1974, the first 3D virtual worlds in Maze War

…then in 1986 affordable personal computers are connected to dial-up networks

And Lucasfilm’s Habitat (and avatars) were born

And then… Worlds Chat, 1995: where Avatars first teleported into the Internet

Also in that year Steven Spielberg created the marriage of virtual worlds and Hollywood with Starbright World

Followed by an explosion of worlds in the mid 1990s…

Explosion of Social Virtual Worlds platforms(Book Avatars by Damer – 1997)

Alphaworld 1995“first teleport”

And in-world building

And emergenceof community

And shared building

Working out how to meet (talking circle) and working together to build-Sherwood Forest Towne (Jan ‘96).

Roles, Robin Hood, Town Crier, old towne layout,

new town, vandalism, first informal ethnographic

practice

1996-IRL

Building the CommunityThe Avatars Conferences - IRL and

InWorld

2004

19981999

2000

2001

2002 2003

1997-IRL

1996-2004

The Avatars IRL ConferencesEarth to Avatars 96(San Francisco)

Design of the first large scale event in avatar cyberspace: Avatars98 Inside Cyberspace

first CyberConference

AW-versionDesign elements: single large meeting space - avatars, chat, web cams,

streaming voice, bots

Visual and functional elements of Avatars98

…and through common media archetypes: Avatars2001

1990s… Beginnings of Multiplayer Gaming Worlds

2003-present: Second Generation of Social Virtual Worlds

Going where No Virtual World has Gone Before: Virtual Walk on the Moon with Apollo

astronaut Rusty Schweickart

Rusty Schweickart in Cyber Space - 1999

Rusty Schweickart in Outer Space - 1969

Rusty became our historical actor and narrator to commemorate the 30th

anniversary of the Apollo XI moon landing

Bruce goes where no avatar has gone before: Cyberspace meets Outerspace – Driving on Mars

Roving the moon looking for water ice

And Bruce’s Avatar has gone where no Avatar has gone

before

Virtual Worlds: The New Medium for the 21st Century

What is in the future?

The answer: it may be the medium that best expresses the inner self to allow a transformation

of the outer life…

Burning Man… a virtual world for transformation of the self

Example, Bruce’s iDoublet ProjectGarments permit Avatars walking “out-world”

The EvoGrid, the Ultimate Bio-World

An “artificial origin of life” in cyberspace in this Century

To the class of ‘009…How has your life in-world changed you

IRL?

Thank you!