This is genuinely exciting news. I’ve spent much of the last couple of weeks lamenting the lack of a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the academic study of virtual worlds, and now we have one.

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research fills a lacuna in the literature and sets out its focus and scope as follows:

The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is an online, open access academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research is a transdisciplinary journal that engages a wide spectrum of scholarship and welcomes contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that intersect virtual worlds research.

The field of virtual worlds research is a continually evolving area of study that spans across many disciplines and the JVWR editorial team looks forward to engaging a wide range of creative and scholarly work.

What are virtual worlds and what is virtual worlds research, within the context of this journal? These are evolving questions that we hope the formation of a community of scholarship will explore and expand. However, to provide a base to build upon, we consider virtual worlds to be computer-based simulated environment where users interact with other users through graphic or textual representations of themselves utilizing textual chat, voice, video or other forms of communication. The term virtual worlds includes, is similar to, or is synonymous (with extensive qualifications) to the terms of virtual reality, virtual space, datascape, metaverse, virtual environment, massively multiplayer online games (MMOs or MMOGs), massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs), multi-user dungeon, domain or dimension (MUDs), MUD object oriented (MOOs), multi-user shared hack, habitat, holodeck, or hallucination (MUSHs), massively-multiuser online graphical environments, collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) or multi-user virtual environments (MUVES), and immersive virtual environments (IVEs).

We see the current predominance of the virtual worlds of Second Life and its competitors as the most recent iteration of a long lineage of developments in virtual reality and gaming both in terms of technologies and conceptualization. Finally, we do not pretend to be a gaming journal, and hope that through this forum we are contributing to the development of specific space within the scholarly and creative communities for discourse on the wide variety of topic areas that are involved in virtual worlds research, including history of virtual worlds, cultural and social theory, quantitative research, qualitative research, virtual ethnographies, pedagogy, education and virtual worlds, development, experimentation, ideas and the intersection of virtual worlds and society.

Of particular interest to me in the first issue:

Cityspace, Cyberspace, and the Spatiology of Information, Michael L. Benedikt [PDF]

Help - Somebody Robbed My Second Life Avatar!, James Elliott & S.E. Kruck [PDF]

A Typology of Virtual Worlds: Historical Overview and Future Directions, Paul R. Messinger, Eleni Stroulia & Kelly Lyons [PDF]

Avatars Are For Real: Virtual Communities and Public Spheres, Eiko Ikegami & Piet Hut [PDF]

How Open Source Software Will Affect Virtual Worlds, Francis X. Taney, Jr. [PDF]

Toward a Definition of “Virtual Worlds”, Mark W. Bell [PDF]

Defining Virtual Worlds and Virtual Environments,Ralph Schroeder [PDF]

This is very significant news for all of us researching virtual worlds and finally provides the sort of forum and resource the field has been sorely missing.

I will be giving a paper, provisionally entitled ‘Violence and Virtuality: virtual ‘terror’ and the counter-strategic challenge’, at the British International Studies Association conference at the University of Exeter in December. Schedule details have yet to be finalised but I hear it’s usually a pretty interesting, if tough, affair. This is the abstract of my contribution to the ‘Virtual Politics’ panel:

Recent media reports have speculated on terrorists’ use of synthetic worlds such as Second Life for training and other purposes. The reality is somewhat different. Although terrorist-style tactics have been employed within synthetic worlds for political, economic and social ends there is currently little evidence to suggest that terrorist organisations or individuals, as normally understood, use synthetic worlds for nefarious ends, or demonstrate the will and opportunities to do so. However, in the global environment of fast-evolving computer-mediated communication (CMC), which terrorists and insurgents have been quick to exploit, this situation is likely to change. This paper explores the possibilities afforded to terrorists and insurgents, and potential options available to planners of counterstrategies. It will also address the issue of ‘virtuality’ and its unresolved relationship with the ‘real’. This has important implications for information strategies in global counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, which must be contingent on an understanding of ‘cyberspace’ as ‘physical’ rather than ‘virtual’ space.

I wish I had more time to respond adequately to a great discussion over at Savage Minds, so this is as much a reminder to self as anything else. Kerim Friedman posted his critique of Tom Boellstorf’s Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, a recently published ethnography of the virtual world I’ve been meaning to have a look at for a while. Kerim doesn’t try to hide his personal dislike of Second Life as a platform but does raise a series of excellent points to which Dusan Writer and Tom Boellstorf amongst others respond. Virtuality, subjectivity, anthropology, post mortem avatars and a lonely cat - all the fun of the fair.

[Cross-posted to CTLab]

Andrew Conway emailed me during the week to alert me to this:

Last week the Office of the Director of Intelligence (ODNI) Special Security Center (SSC), which acts as ODNI’s personnel security directorate, began soliciting white papers for a new research opportunity called Cyber Behavior and Personnel Security. The theme of this opportunity indicates that ODNI believes an individual’s conduct in cyberspace should be a factor in the security clearance adjudication process.

Andrew’s comments on this programme are well worth reading, as is his new blog Zero Intelligence Agents, which deals with dynamic networks, spatial modelling, human terrain and terrorism, for starters at least. Straight on the blogroll.

Miss Ordinal Malaprop explains how Second Life works:

Aside from being a fascinating graphic from K-Zero, it’s a sobering and exciting thought that over 300m people are now registered as users of virtual worlds. That’s the equivalent to the third-most populous country on Earth, the United States of America.

The list is not complete (it excludes 10m+ World of Wankcraft players, for example) but gives some idea of how many people are exploring these new online spaces. If I’m reading the chart right it’s the under-20s who comprise the bulk of these, and I suspect that more of these are active users than, say, in Second Life. Demographically that suggests a new generation of native users …

(h/t Metaverse Journal)

Nicholas Carr quotes from an article by BBC journalist Bill Thompson in Miasma Computing:

The metaphor of “the cloud” is a seductive one, but it’s also dangerous. It not only suggests that our new utility-computing system is detached from the physical (and political) realities of our planet, but it also lends to that system an empyrean glow. The metaphor sustains and extends the old idealistic belief in “cyberspace” as a separate, more perfect realm in which the boundaries and constraints of the real world are erased.

Bill Thompson raises a warning flag:

Behind all the rhetoric and promotional guff the “cloud” is no such thing: every piece of data is stored on a physical hard drive or in solid state memory, every instruction is processed by a physical computer and every network interaction connects two locations in the real world … In the real world national borders, commercial rivalries and political imperatives all come into play, turning the cloud into a miasma as heavy with menace as the fog over the Grimpen Mire that concealed the Hound of the Baskervilles in Arthur Conan Doyle’s story.

Now there’s a metaphor. I’m guessing, though, that the marketers aren’t going to allow “miasma computing” into our vocabulary. It’s kind of a downer.

Nicholas goes on to say:

The metaphor of “the cloud” seems to have been derived from those schematic drawings of corporate computing systems that use stylized images of clouds to represent the Internet - that vast, ill-defined digital mass that lies beyond the firewall. Those drawings always reminded me of the ancient maps of the known world, the edges of which were marked with the legend “Beyond Here There Be Dragons.”

The dragons are stirring.

These are wise words - I strongly believe the ‘virtual’ is the ‘real’, not the ‘Other’. In a previous blog incarnation I wrote something I titled Metaphor: Nature in Cyberspace, and thought I’d post it here again to see if I broadly agree with what I wrote back in March 2007. And (with some reservations) I think I do. Anyway, here it is:

The ever-excellent Roderick Jones at Counterterrorism Blog (who also blogs at MetaSecurity) posits a future in which virtual assassination could be deployed as an effective a tool as that of the 19th century anarchists:

… a cyberspace assassination would seek to achieve the following aims: prevent the candidate from actually being in cyberspace ( the equivalent of virtual-murder), instill fear amongst their supporters that the same may happen to them and as a side-effect force the political campaigns to spend money on their cyber security or force the Secret Service to protect cyber-personas (the protection of cyber-identities is clearly something that all protective security agencies are going to need to consider). The tools to do this arguably already exist - hackers or botnets for hire could be diverted to these ends. This of course is fast-forwarding to a future more virtualized point where society is more reliant on cyber-spaces but similar tools could be applied today.

As with all things virtual, the scenario can be flipped. The use of precision cyber-attacks (or virtual assassinations) against America’s enemies should be considered today as a tactic to disrupt cyber-terrorists.

Read the article here.

Michael Tanji’s Getting Serious about ‘Virtual’ Terror: Some Informed Comment About Online Hype and Reality lives up to its own billing as a well-reasoned and level-headed look at the the use of virtual worlds by terrorists and insurgents. The following passage exemplifies the approach we should be taking:

Virtual worlds are a potential breeding ground for new threats, but as with any sufficiently technically advanced or inherently dangerous prospect, there are real hurdles to overcome. The greatest threat however is not that terrorists will achieve some quantum leap in capabilities by operating online; it is that so many are so quick to dismiss the seriousness of this issue thanks to the hype perpetrated by the ill-informed. Death from the ‘Net may never become reality, but there will be no forgiveness if we allow even middling capabilities to develop – and eventually launch – from cyberspace unchecked.

Read the rest of this excellent article here.

(via Roderick Jones)

MICHAEL HILL

The Associated Press

TROY, N.Y.–Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in “Second Life.” A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world.

But Edd is different.

His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out “Second Life” is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It’s also a frontier in AI research because it’s a controllable environment where testing intelligent creations is easier.

“It’s a very inexpensive way to test out our technologies right now,” said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory.

Bringsjord sees Edd as a forerunner to more sophisticated creations that could interact with people inside three-dimensional projections of settings like subway stops or city streets. He said the holographic illusions could be used to train emergency workers or solve mysteries.

But first, a virtual reality check.

Edd is not running rampant through the cyber streets of “Second Life.” He goes only where Bringsjord and his graduate students place him for tests. He can answer questions like “Where are you from?” but understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic.

“Second Life” is attractive to researchers in part because virtual reality is less messy than plain-old reality. Researchers don’t have to worry about wind, rain or coffee spills.

And virtual worlds can push along AI research without forcing scientists to solve the most difficult problems – like, say, creating a virtual human – right away, said Michael Mateas, a computer science professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Researching in virtual realities has become increasingly popular the past couple years, said Mateas, leader of the school’s Expressive Intelligence Studio for AI and gaming.

“It’s a fantastic sweet spot – not too simple, not too complicated, high cultural value,” he said.

Bringsjord is careful to point out that the computations for Edd’s mental feats have been done on workstations and are not sapping “Second Life” servers. The calculations will soon be performed on a supercomputer at Rensselaer with support from research co-sponsor IBM Corp.

Operators of “Second Life” don’t seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a “fascinating” opportunity for AI to evolve.

“I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in ‘Second Life,’” Lester said, “… let them randomly walk the grid.”

That is years off by most experts’ estimations. Edd’s most sophisticated cognitive feat so far – played out in “Second Life” and posted on the Web – involves him witnessing a gun being switched from one briefcase to another. Edd was able to infer that another “Second Life” character who left the room during the switch would incorrectly think the gun was still in the first suitcase.

This ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant for an AI agent, though it puts Edd on par with a 4-year-old – and the calculus required “under the hood” to achieve this feat is mind-numbingly complex.

A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they’re interacting with another person – the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers – has been elusive [the so-called Turing test]. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.

AI agents do best in tightly controlled environments: Think of automated phone programs that recognize your responses when you say “operator” or “repair.”

Bringsjord sees “Second Life” as a way station. He eventually wants to create other environments where more sophisticated creations could display courage or deceive people, which would be the first step in developing technology to detect deception.

The avatars could be projected at RPI’s $145 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, opening in October, which will include spaces for holographic projections. Officials call them “holodecks” in homage to the virtual reality room on the “Star Trek” television series.

That sort of visual fidelity is many years down the line, just like complex AI. John Kolb, RPI’s chief information officer, said the best three-dimensional effects still require viewers to wear special light-polarizing glasses.

“If you want to do texture mapping on a wall for instance, that’s easy. We can do that today,” Kolb said. “If you want to start to build cognitive abilities into avatars, well, that’s going to take a bit more work.”