Varying Levels of Computer Literacy in Virtual Worlds

Today, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine in Second Life - an average, run of the mill conversation for myself. In the conversation, I used the acronym PDF - which I would think is pretty standard for anyone on the web despite how much I hate the actual format. Imagine my surprise when someone in a virtual world didn't know what a 'PDF' was... it isn't that the person is dull or lacking in intelligence - the person simply didn't know.

And Sky FM is magically playing Weird Al Yankovic's 'White and Nerdy'...

There is an assumption that I had to face because of that. The assumption is that everyone who enters a virtual world has built up to it - which is wrong. When I compare my own experience within Second Life, it is apparent that I was at an advantage to many because my life can be easier counted in old keyboards than years. I mean... I remember when the mouse was a big deal (and how I hated it then, and I still don't really like it). Where am I going with this?

Well, for one I have a contract to write something along these lines sitting in a PDF - and knowing one's audience is important. Simply knowing you have to write something or communicate something tends to give one a focus in that context (misused, this focus is a blinder). With a focus, signal comes out of the noises, and that which may be frustrating to communicate is probably the most important to communicate. I tell many people that the reason I write is so that I don't have to keep repeating myself (ask me how many times I have said that and laugh), which is true. That's where the FAQ came from, and I hope everyone knows that FAQ stands for 'Frequently Asked Questions' and that PDF stands for Adobe's 'Portable Document Format' - which really isn't that portable.

Facing that assumption down tears at the whole premise where people believe Web 1.0 lead to Web 2.0 lead to Web 3D. From where I stand, Web 3D is supposed to build and integrate to the technologies of Web 2.0, and in turn Web 2.0 is built from Web 1.0. Some stuff gets tossed out ('like Microsoft Frontpage', the author wrote with an evil glee), some things change, some things get reinvented and mixed up. AJAX is a good example of this, taking Javascript to a level of usefulness. What is easy to forget is that sometimes the cognitive dissonance created by a bit of a mixture technology and society tends to give direction for a person's literacy¹.

So in dealing with others in a virtual world, one cannot assume that they automatically know much about the web itself. They may have never had a blog, never used FTP or even learned to do a tracert. A bit of me believes that this may lead to more disparity in levels of computer literacy as people 'specialize' themselves to certain tasks. For example, a blogger will know about technorati but may not be able to edit an image to save their lives. A person running a business in a virtual world may well lack experience in office software applications, such as spreadsheets and even word processing. And it is easy to forget how many people can't even configure their own email applications to receive and send email.

When we talk about virtual worlds and education, I wonder how much of this is addressed... in a supposedly controlled environment of prerequisites, does this assist education in the context of a virtual world? Is the real world very consistent? People who have survived higher education with their intellects intact know that the world is not consistent... which is something that people who have navigated life without higher education seem to know easily.

In no way am I saying that there should be prerequisites for using a virtual world. Because of virtual worlds, I got my hands dirty in Gimp and Blender, to name 2 things - the virtual world created the need to learn some of these things, and while I may never get hired as a graphic artist or CAD sort of person, it is an interesting and thoughtful experience which gives one broader experience and a better ability to communicate with others.

It bears some thought, and probably should have some more in the context of virtual worlds as educational platforms. For me, I find them (and the internet) an autodidact's paradise. But to others, they may not be so welcoming... and dooming people because they are not versed in technologies seems narrow minded and, yes, shallow. Of course, attempting to pull people down because they are familiar with the technologies demonstrates the same mindset.

I wonder how virtual worlds will change computer literacy in the coming decade. With only 16.9% of the global population with access to the internet, the case studies are being made on a very focused data set - along the lines of what Talbott wrote of multicultural computing.

¹I use the word 'mixture' to differentiate it from 'solution'; the mixture is not necessarily the solution.