Virtual Worlds, Digital Divides and Bandwidth

Discussion on ClickableCulture had me deep in thought for a fair amount of time last week. There were immediate things I wanted to write related to Is ‘Second Life’ Sustainable? and Tech Digest: ‘Justin Bovington Was Not Misquoted’. The two posts are related in a way which is symptomatic of the digital divide, a phrase abused by the media more often than not. As I wrote before, the Digital Divide requires a context to be sensible, and in discussion of the two posts at Clickable Culture - there are contexts.

But it's not that simple.

The easier one to write about would be the usability issues as discussed in Is ‘Second Life’ Sustainable?. The hint for me was the use of the word 'ubiquity', which wasn't intended but was a good tangent.

The Numbers Game

We talk about '2 million accounts in SecondLife' (as opposed to 2 million human beings or 2 million recurring users), and the media makes it look big because there is no frame of reference. What is the frame of reference? Perhaps it's the number of people who have internet access worldwide: 1,076,203,987. That puts SecondLife penetration at 0.18% of global internet penetration if we go with what the media reports so foolishly. 0.18%

How does that 2 million stack up against global population? 0.03%. Let's be serious. The internet isn't even up to 20% penetration on a global scale. Sure, large businesses are involved in SecondLife, but large businesses have dominated the media as far back as the printing press. That's not news. That's business.

Connectivity and Broadband

While many of these businesses are attempting to capitalize on SecondLife numbers and internet usage - with a definite focus on broadband intensive technology - I'm left to wonder why they aren't working to expand the market, or their reach. No, it's not their responsibility to do so, but if 5,423,493,073 - 5.4 billion people - aren't a worthwhile increase in market, I don't know what is. Of course, of the 1,076,203,987 with internet access - it's questionable how many people actually have broadband. If we were to consider the planet a democracy, who would be the majority?

Bringing It Back To Reality

Yes, the internet is cool. Web 2.0 was a nice buzzword for... a month. Podcasts have uses. Virtual worlds like SecondLife have great potential. But they aren't everywhere. They aren't even near everywhere, and while it's cool to talk about who and what is cool within these exclusive groups of technologically enabled folks - including me - now and then it is healthy to look outside of the comfortable group of people who agree that it's all ...cool.

The reality is that text remains the backbone of the internet, through HTML and email - as well as the derivatives of those technologies. At the center of all of that remains bandwidth pricing, issues related to Network Neutrality, and a lot of policy issues that still need to be worked on. Even the Wikipedia has issues related to representation of information from places where internet access and content are still somewhat a novelty (and releasing a CD is questionable in the context of the Wikipedia: Look but don't touch?)¹.

Does this mean we should feel guilty about having internet access and broadband? No. But it does mean that if we are sincerely want to have the things that social entrepeneurs and metaverse evangelists keep shouting - a lot of work needs to be done and should not be forgotten or glossed over in the hype of a number of people who, on a global scale, are not as significant as they seem on the internet.

There are things which can be done to make things easier. It would be wonderful if some of the energy that is expended on making press releases were dedicated, instead, into making the internet - including all the technologies on top of it - more useful. Usable. Accessible.

Usability

Usability was a big topic in the discussion on Is ‘Second Life’ Sustainable?. Out of it all, it's apparent that in the context of SecondLife, things could be made easier - but in the broader context of internet usability, there remain issues. There have been issues since the first web browser, and most of it revolves around one thing: competing standards and software instead of standards and software which do not isolate people for the purpose of maintaining a marketshare and creating different standards of usability. It's a fact. Embrace, extend and extinguish.

This legitimizes open standards, and it also legitimizes Free Software and Open Source. While the less technologically knowledgeable may say that this is the 'domination of tech people' - and there is some truth to that - there is also a broader context of getting information and software to people who are less technologically enabled than the complaintants. Those 5,423,493,073 people in the context of the internet, and a larger number for those without broadband. Content remains a key problem, but content is of no use if there is no content delivery system. Holding books until someone can read them would be just as effective. Language? Those whose sensory abilities are not the same as the rest of us, such as the visually impaired? In the context of a virtual world, has anyone actually stopped and thought about whether it would be usable in present forms to someone who cannot see?

While we discuss learning curves for proprietary standards and applications, it is important to look at it in the broader context. The broader context has a lot of room for improvement. You can sing 'Web 2.0' and 'visual world' until the bits come flying back through the wire you are connected to, but if you sing it and 5.4 billion people do not hear it... does it really exist?

Usability in various forms has to be addressed. While SecondLife is criticized for many different reasons related to usability, the truth of the matter is that people who log in are already computer literate to a degree which permits basic use of the internet. Unfortunately - as one would expect - a virtual world requires a greater level of literacy to use. And when one considers how non-intuitive a web browser is for some people, it's interesting to note that basic movement in SecondLife follows arrow keys. Of course, on the internet you don't end up with a box on your head - but on the internet, you don't have the box spawned from nothing in the first place.

Could it be made better? Yes. But in a broader context, there are lessons to be learned about the usability of the internet from SecondLife. The simple navigation of many 3 dimensional environments takes some getting used to, but as human beings we find navigating three dimensional space as intuitive - once we get our bearings. Give someone new to a computer and the internet an avatar in a virtual world and tell them to move forward, I'd give good odds that they would use the arrow key. Give the same person a web browser and tell them to move forward, I'm betting that eventually you will get a well-deserved funny look. There's much to learn either way, and either way people have to learn stuff to do stuff. The more you want to do, the more you have to learn - yet education, on a global scale, remains incompatible through curriculums, textbooks, and expectations.

Language remains an issue on the internet, though less so - as far as content. Yet when it comes to real time communication, even the best tools can become weapons. A turn of phrase improperly translated within a context can have very strange results (trust me, I know). On the internet, articles are more forgiving than real time chat in a virtual world. Within SecondLife, good people have come up with some ways to try to bypass linguistic issues using automatic translation, but automatic translation remains limited.

Socio-Economic Divides

The post Tech Digest: ‘Justin Bovington Was Not Misquoted’ and the discussion were interesting; only one person of African descent appeared to respond about an issue which is volatile in many regards; singling out a single race always has that effect. But, as noted in a meeting within SecondLife in July 2006, there just aren't that many avatars that... aren't white. At the diversity meeting, this was attributed - rightly or wrongly - to the internet access available. When you have Schwarzenegger Spending $460 million on a Broadband Task Force in the same state which has Silicon Valley, something isn't right - but it isn't an issue of color. It's just easier to see. There are a number of people without access who are white. To be surprised at the number of any single ethnicity of people at an event is probably a natural response, but is dangerous ground for an adult involved in public relations².

Some people just can't afford bandwidth. That certain ethnic groups are not represented as much on the internet or in virtual worlds is a reflection of internet access. In an interesting twist, China seems to be indirectly subsidizing internet access through virtual items in virtual worlds - but they have access. Could a virtual world be leveraged in poorer communities in the same way? Probably. Being 'economically disadvantaged' is no reflection on intelligence. In other words, poor people aren't stupid³. Still, if they have no disposable income there is little apparent interests in businesses which serve these communities. This means a cycle continues. Can the cycle be broken? Probably only by the very same people who are affected, but what is the impetus?

Content

While Schwarzeneggerean efforts are made to bridge broadband issues in the State of California, there has to be content which people see as worthwhile, which includes generating income. This is where Open Content comes in; yet the Open Content by itself means little. The content has to enable and enhance the community while providing the potential for opportunity - given connectivity (which is another cycle). This, of course, ties back into education.

Global Economy

A virtual economy enables people to send and receive payments around the world... where there is connectivity. It's another level of globalization, and for the most part it is a good thing - where there is connectivity and where there is the financial infrastructure to send and receive payments. Without connectivity and financial infrastructure, there is little in the way of opportunity to celebrate. Creative people find ways around systems which may or may not be legal; policy may lag so far behind that policy hasn't even been created to determine the legality of some transactions. While the minority of the world discusses virtual taxation and begins to create policy, these policies may not be to the advantage of the 5.4 billion people who are not online - the majority.

When 55% of SecondLife's residents are said to be outside of the United States (November, 2006), it should be apparent that virtual economies have the potential to allow the sending and receiving of payments where the financial infrastructure of nations lags. Yet the payment options to access the virtual economy remain a problem just to be accessible; a glance around could easily give the assumption that credit card usage is on the increase worldwide.

Still, enterprising people find ways. In the context of virtual worlds, isn't it odd that farming has such an earthy name? Perhaps because it involves what some may consider menial tasks to produce something of value - still, farmers in virtual economies laugh their way to the bank. And in other places of the world, such work can't be had because of Microprocessor Immune Deficiency Syndrome. While WSIS and the Internet Governance Forum were supposed to address international policy which enforces some of Microprocessor Immune Deficiency Syndrome, little has truly been done - and Network Neutrality is discussed as if it is a problem of only one country. Internet governance? Internet governance for who?

A Global View

When one takes a step back and weighs in who isn't involved and who remains without all the benefits that companies fly up their corporate flagpoles in press releases, virtual worlds such as SecondLife are lost in the greater problems of internet accessibility, financial infrastructure, and plain opportunity. When the potential varies so much on a global level, it is hard to look at any of the numbers being put out as anything near impressive. Will it change? Slowly, it is - but that change has to happen faster if we expect policy to be representative of a globally wired community. And that change requires something that this planet has demonstrated it is not very good at: global cooperation. After all, if we had more global cooperation everyone would have the same opportunities. The reality is that at this time, 5.4 people don't have the opportunities that we have - you and I, who access the internet.

¹ Yeah, an article on the Wikipedia is in the works related to representation along these lines.
² I remember as a child being at Niagara Falls when a young man, about my age, apparently saw the first person of African descent in his life, a gentleman near us. He was openly amazed, but that didn't make him a racist.
³ Conversely, people with money aren't necessarily smart.