Digital Storytelling: Conclusion: Are we ready for the change?
Does anyone remember Google Glass and their deployment nightmares? Stories like the Seattle restaurant that banned Google Glass citing privacy concerns presents one of the first challenges to public AR and VR but not the last or, by any means, the only one. For more information see this Huffington Post Summary Post and this Guardian outlining why Google Glass was banned in theaters.
But the changes go beyond physical comfort with the technology and reach deep into what the technologies can do to people's real lives. In A Rape in Cyberspace Julian Dibbell tells the story of a "virtual" rape and the consequences (virtual and real), both for the people involved directly, the two victims of the event, the perpetrator, for the administrator, wizard in MOO parlance, who took it upon himself to enact the ultimate punishment available in the MOO and the writer himself.
The what and the how of the event have never been in question. The perpetrator, a character named Mr. Bungle, used a MOO object programmed to force other users to perform actions he created... in this case text based representations of rape and lesbian sex, all done against the other players' will and without their consent.
The perpetrator's character was deleted from the MOO's database by a Wizard, as administrators in MOOs are known. However the MOO doesn't ban people based on IP or email addresses used during registration so it was easy for Mr. Bungle to create a new account in the MOO.
Perhaps the most important thing, to me, is how real the event was for the participants even when it wasn't real (in the sense that it didn't happen in real life) but the consequences were just as serious as if they happened in the real world.
As a thank you for reading this long series of posts, I've created an ebook (epub) format of the material in the series for you to download. ebook download
Bibliography #
Text based MUDs #
- The dragon ate my homework — Wired Magazine, 1993
- A Rape in Cyberspace
- The Original Internet Abuse Story: Julian Dibbell 20 Years After ‘A Rape in Cyberspace’
Simnet #
Habitat #
- Lessons from Lucasfilm's Habitat
- Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry
- The Game Archaeologist moves into Lucasfilm's Habitat: Part 1
- The Game Archaeologist moves into Lucasfilm's Habitat: Part 2
- The Game Archaeologist: The return of Habitat
- Bringing Habitat Back to Life
- Neoclassical Habitat Docs
- Neoclassical Habitat Github
Hololens #
Creating stories for the Metaverse #
Are we ready for the change? #
- Huffington Post Articles on Google Glass Ban
- Pokemon go: get outta here
- Will the real body please stand up??: Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures (PDF)
- Cyborg Anthropology
- The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
- Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
- Virtuality And Its Discontents
- Always On/Always On-You: The Tethered Self
- Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Links, articles, books and concepts #
- The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the electronic fronteer
- The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology
- Technology is making it easier to trust strangers
- CABBIBO
- AR.js
Videos #
- Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
- The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive
- Computer History Museum Revolutionaries: George Dyson with Museum CEO John Hollar
- Authors at Google: George Dyson, "Turing's Cathedral"
- Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now
- Youth and Media - Re:Born Digital, in Video: Identities
- A cyber-magic card trick like no other | Marco Tempest TED
- The magic of truth and lies (and iPods) | Marco Tempest