Spent a very enjoyable morning talking about alternate reality games, Second Life and Halo in a supervisory team meeting with my PhD student, followed by a fascinating talk by Sian Bayne from Edinburgh University on educational uses of social technologies. She talked about the ‘uncanny’ quality of Second Life, a concept that set me off.
As an ex-Cognitive Scientist, I still find myself flabbergasted by what people routinely manage to do with their socio-cognitive systems. People move in an out of the various digital worlds they inhabit, creating continuity for themselves and weaving complex strands of existence that interpenetrate their ‘real’ experience (whatever that is), their fantasy and their on-line experiences. We none of us think this is particularly difficult, or odd. It only becomes so when it either doesn’t work or it goes wrong. That’s what’s uncanny.
Hi Josie,
I agree, I also find it interesting that all these tools and technologies allow us to be more productive (second Life, Skype et al, allow us to discuss things with peers at a distance which in the old days might have meant flying out somewhere or a long exchange of emails and faxes) and yet we’ve managed to fill the additional time doing more. It’s interesting that in the ‘old days’ when computers took ages to do a single feat we accepted this. Now technology is increasing our rate of productivity rather than being a barrier to it.
The Second Life projects are getting very interesting these days and I don’t know if you’ve seen the new headsets that allow you to interact using your brain alone but it’s all getting very close to the sci-fi ideas of true VR immersion and where virtual worlds are not classed as any different to the ‘real’ world but are an extension of it (as defined for example by the Otherworld series by Tad Williams).