What if I’ve got it all wrong?

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cross-posted from my Second Life blog

I’ve been taking a break from the academic life, and until this morning couldn’t stop stressing about it.

Getting further and further behind in my research, I was finding it harder and harder to pick up where I had left off.

But this morning, en route to my campus office, I had an insight: what if my ennui was not laziness or lack of focus on my part, but my mind actually conducting some involved juggling of what I had already done, what I had read in depth and what I had grazed upon?

What if my mind needed some time to sort the disparate pieces out and begin to form a half-completed jigsaw puzzle?

I have been ’stuck’ on the methodological analysis phase of my early research — looking at those who have come before me, who has done what and why.

But perhaps I have been distinctly disinterested in prior research and methodological issues precisely because I am looking at the wrong areas?

I have been concentrating my half-focus on the 2D online community (as commented upon by Howard Rheingold, Sherry Turkle inter alia). But I fundamentally believe that the 3D community is so different from a 2D one that the previous ‘rules’ no longer apply.

Perhaps, instead of looking at the body of research on the 2D community I should instead be looking at the prior work on 3D collaborative communities…

For example, a quick search via Google Scholar on 3D collaborative communities shows a large number of texts from the mid 1990s onwards. Just picking one at random, Collaborative Virtual Environments by Benford, Greenhalgh, Rodden and Pycock, 2001, encourages some fascinating thoughts.

To wit, there is a whole body of research that I have not even known about, that of CSCW (Computer-supported cooperative work). The authors point to work in the early-mid 1990s that looked at how conversational mechanisms were adapted in shared virtual worlds.

In addition, that the 3D collaborative virtual environment (CVE) has the potential to combine the productive strengths of traditional broadcasting media with the community strengths of CVEs and their interactive narrative strengths (especially now that ’social media’ has brought the ‘communitarian’ aspect of traditional online community [forums, bbs] to a greater focus in the eyes of business).

And what of the exciting possibilities of mobile computing?

I am fortunate to be once again catching up with David Boloker and Iwan Winoto from IBM again shortly. Those with a long memory will remember that the last time the three of us caught up a long and fascinating discussion on mobile computing being the ‘platform of the future’ occupied a large chunk of our time.

What if ubiquitous, mobile and wearable computing becomes more normative? How will that impact on SME interest in 3D CVEs and CSCWs?

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