I’m convinced I sometimes see the “real world” pixellate. I suspect it too is virtual.

I have always defined my character in virtual worlds by creating an avatar, as far as possible, that fits an ideal of how I will react to the world. This does not stop my RL personality from intruding, but helps me to Be who I Am in the virtuial environment. In that sense, I agree that I do not have to interact to Be in a virtual world, at least not with the residents. I DO have to engage myself as (not WITH) the avatar, in order not to trivialise the world experience.

The division I see, which is as valid for me in RL as in SL or other worlds, is a) who I present myself as, as a visible living Body, and b) what I do as this visible living Body.

For me the difference between my RL existence and the SL or virtual existence, is just the medium. I am still ME in both – but the Me I am is the manifestation of my Being as approriate to the world I am in.

I guess I am a pure escapist – in RL I escape into the physical world (out of my Real Universe, the mind), in SL I escape into the LL world (out of my Real Universe, the mind).

@Gwyn: “On the other hand, there is no digital self without online interaction.” That’s exactly what I’m questioning. I think you can have just as much of a solitary digital self, just sitting behind that rock in Coldridge Valley as a level 1 Gnome Rogue and doing nothing, as you can a solitary atomic self. I don’t see a difference in kind here at all.

Also, “I agree that “new residents” tend to ignore those labels, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist In fact, it’s absolutely unsurprising that when they finally hear about them they find the concept preposterous.” Again, I don’t think we actually know that “they find the concept preposterous” to any greater degree than previous generations. We may sort of have a gut feeling that way; on the other hand there are *lots* of current-generation residents over at the imm end of the spectrum, and our gut feeling could well be wrong about the general trend. I don’t think we want to start assuming that the current generation of residents is all bunch up down at the aug end; I don’t think that’s true.

(Note that I’m only talking about the parts of your posting that I disagree with. Overall I think it’s useful and insightful. And I’m glad you liked the story. )

(Oh, and I seem to be posting here successfully now! Before when the comments were never appearing I was authenticating via http://daleinniss.wordpress.com/ and OpenID; maybe there’s something wrong with that channel…)

It is certainly true that SL does not offer the kind of immersion one would expect of VR as it is presented in movies like ‘The Matrix’ and books like ‘Neuromancer’. However, several experiments from cognitive neuroscience and psychology suggest that what we have now may be more immersive than you might suppose.

1: THE BASKETBALL GAME AND THE GORILLA.

This experiment demonstrates ‘Inattentional Blindness’. People are shown a video of two teams, each throwing a baskbetball among themselves. The observers are asked to count how many times the ball is passed by one team, while ignoring passes made by the other.

After the video ends, people are asked ‘did you see the gorilla?’. About half say ‘no’. Amazingly, these people fail to notice a guy in an ape costume, walking right across the scene and even stopping to thump his chest! So absorbed were they in the counting task, they did not see the gorilla even though they were looking directly at it.

So, what about SL/RL? Sure, SL only exists inside the frame of your monitor. But, if your attention is focused on what is happening within the monitor, surely it must be the case that the ‘real world’ out on the periphery of your vision essentially stops existing, thanks to inattentional blindness.

2: THE MONKEY AND THE RAKE.

Monkeys (and presumably, humans) have a region of the brain called the parietal cortex. This controls actions of reaching and grasping, and neurons in this region become active when anything comes near the hand.

If you give a monkey a rake, it does not take long before the region activates whenever something comes close to the end of the rake. As far as the parietal lobe is concerned, the rake has become an extension of the monkey’s arm.

As you control your avatar and move it around inworld, it may well be the case that it too becomes incorporated into your body map, essentially making it a part of your body.

3: READ ‘OLD’, BE ‘OLD’.

In this experiment from social psychology, people are supposedly tested on their ability to turn random words into sentences. In reality, most of the words relate to stereotypes of elderly people and the experiment’s purpose is to show how people’s behaviour changes when primed with such stereotypes. Sure enough, students primed with the ‘elderly’ words walk away behaving like elderly people, walking more slowly and stuff like that. They don’t even know they are doing it.

So, what happens if you spend a long time roleplaying a character, responding to people’s reactions to that character, rather than yourself? Is it not likely that you will become primed to act out the personae of that character, and maybe not even realise you are doing so?

4: THE SKIN YOU ARE IN.

In this one, people were randomly assigned one of two types of avatar. One type was an attractive avvie, and the other was an ugly avvie. It was noticed that, when engaging in social situations, people who had attractive avvies behaved with more confidence than the ‘uglies’. For instance, the uglies tended to stand further away from people they were chatting to, compared to the ‘beauties’. This was true, regardless of how shy or confident the ‘real life’ person happened to be.

I should point out that participants were wearing VR helmets and so fully immersed (in a visual sense, at least) in the computer-generated environment. But they were only given 5 minutes in which to familiarise themselves with their new appearance. Most of us do not use VR headgear when logged in to Sl, of course, but we might spend years interacting with other people while (perhaps) embodying an avvie unlike our physical appearance. I dare say we naturally conform to whatever levels of confidence or shyness are appropriate, given our avatar’s physical looks.

While logged into SL, it is probably the case that all four happen simultaneously. You have inattentional blindness of the ‘real world’ on the periphery of your vision while focusing attention on the world within your monitor, your avatar becomes incorporated into your body map, essentially making it part of your self, you are reading people’s responses to your appearance and behaviour, and so being primed to take on certain stereotypes and you have spent enough time embodying your avvie to slip quickly and comfortably into a mindset appropriate for your virtual presence.

All in all, I think these facts of psychology and brain science strongly suggest that ‘immersion’ does happen, even without jacking in ala The Matrix:)

Rest assured that there is no need to crush your ideas, since everything you have said is very much compatible with what is possible using the technology of SL. It most certainly can be used as a means of communication between others and what you perceive to be indistinguishable from your ‘real’ self. Equally, SL lends itself to roleplaying and the creation of fictional characters. Do we are argue over whether or not the novel is a more propper use of written language than the autobiography? No, we recognise both as legitimate uses of the technology. We should do the same for your POV and mine.