An experimental three-way conversation about the future of virtual worlds is taking place among Clay Shirky, Henry Jenkins and Beth Coleman, the first round of which is now complete with Beth’s recent post. I find myself reluctant to even blog about this, as most of the conversation leading up to this point (kicked off by some tendentious posts by Shirky over at ValleyWag) has been counter-productive for those who actually want to make some kind of even-handed inquiry into what’s happening with 3D online technologies. But the present round of blog posts from Shirky, Jenkins and Coleman seems more balanced, including Shirky’s. Unfortunately, the result is that not all that much is being said that’s really new, at least, not to my eye. Shirky is right to question Second Life‘s adoption numbers (when he can put aside the vitriol he’s directed against the press; that’s a separate issue), but they’ve been questioned many times before. Jenkins’s post is interesting for putting virtual worlds in the broader context of participatory culture. I think Beth Coleman’s, though, does the most to push the conversation forward. Instead of arguing over which part of the elephant is the right one to examine, she pushes some ideas out to us for adoption and/or consideration, including the need for a standard measurement of usage, whether such world will be created in our image, and the need for interoperability and stronger communications between virtual worlds and the other technologies through which we communicate and manipulate information. This last section even includes a line that sums up my own view about virtual worlds and about what I’m doing here on 3pointD: “What virtual worlds promise is an augmentation of human-to-human communication.” Win.
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