|
 |
 |
| The fact that your Avatar represents you and the various Virtual Worlds represent the various environments you can explore is nicely parallelled by the fact that your Avatar is contained in your personal computer and the various Virtual Worlds are contained in other computers within that network of computers interlinked by tele-communications we call the Internet. When you give that Connect command, you place your Avatar into the Virtual World you have chosen to explore. Note that you are in charge. You create your Avatar, you decide when and where it will go, and it is under your control during your (its?) various adventures in cyberspace. You have even more control when you chose to embellish or even create a Virtual World. This is one major distinction between Virtual Worlds populated by Avatars and Chat Rooms. It is a beautiful illustration of the anarchy of the Internet. It is created by its users. We finally have a democratic medium in which we can all show our home movies. ENTERTAINMENT AND ENLIGHTENMENT As with most innovations in media, the initial emphasis is on entertainment rather than enlightenment. There is a bigger market for the former. It is difficult to imagine a programme called Enlightenment Today surviving for 20 years on prime time television, or to imagine Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer producing a popular series called That's Enlightenment!. It is estimated that a billion people watching the 30th Oscar Awards on television. If it were televised live, what audience could we anticipate for the handing out of the Nobel Prizes - the equivalent awards for enlightenment? Most three-dimensional worlds available on CD-ROM are games. Even the more enlightened ones - for example, the brilliant series Manhole, Cosmic Osmo, Myst, Riven by brothers Robyn and Rand Miller - represent imaginary worlds [CARROLL 94, 97]. Some recent CD-ROMs - for example, SPQR and The Legacy of Time - take a step in an interesting direction, since the puzzle-solving takes place in virtual worlds based on history - ancient Rome in the former and various past and future places in the latter. One incidentally picks up some sense of the history and geography as one wanders about those virtual worlds. |
 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 
|