WILLIAM WISE had always felt he should have been born a woman. A year and a half ago, he finally got the chance to live as one. He chose a provocative new look: a cute, contemporary hairstyle with bangs, a tank top with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline, and bare midriff. There was one twist, however. He had to live inside an online virtual world called .
This alternative persona (pictured above), which goes by the name , allowed him finally to understand what it was like to live as a woman – something he felt unable to test out in the real world, but which gave him immense fulfilment. “I liked myself so much better as Jani – she was fun, happy, even bold and witty, while the real-life me was overwhelmed with fear and self-doubt,” he says.
The realisation sparked a personal transformation. Wise came out as a transsexual to his family and friends, and is now preparing for several operations that will change his gender in the real world too, where he will soon be known as Rebecca. “I eventually discovered what a transsexual was and that I might well be one,” he explains.
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Elsewhere in Second Life, Wise’s story is starting to be repeated. From people with gender concerns or disabilities to those dealing with the aftermath of cancer and stroke, this popular virtual world is becoming a uniquely comforting place for those who find reality challenging or hostile. Far from isolating them from the real world, however, what people do in the virtual space is feeding back into, and improving, their real lives. Political and social activism is also taking root in the virtual world, sparking hopes that it could change things in the real world.
It hasn’t always been obvious that virtual goings-on could feed back into the real world. When Linden Lab of San Francisco, California, started Second Life in 2003, it quickly gained a reputation as being little more than a hippy hang-out, where people had cyber sex, took virtual drugs and indulged in eccentric games, such as a virtual recreation of the Boston tea party.
However, Second Life has since morphed from a virtual playground into a force for change in the real world. As virtual objects and services gained real-world value, a flourishing internal economy emerged, and real-world businesses started to take notice. Meanwhile people began to see the virtual space as a forum that enhanced some forms of social interaction.
“Second Life has morphed from a playground into a force for change in the real world”
“There are signs that we are witnessing the birth of a significant new modality of human interaction,” claims the website of , an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, who has been studying the impact of virtual worlds on relationships since 2004, via his avatar Tom Bukowski. “You’ll see all kinds of expansions of virtual worlds into domains of human life that we can’t predict,” he adds.
So what makes virtual spaces appealing? A significant aspect is the ability to choose your own body. “In the actual world, we are born with bodies,” says Boellstorff. “We can change them only with significant difficulty and expense.” That’s not the case inside Second Life, where residents are free to customise how they look with a few mouse clicks. Even apart from being able to change your gender, this has “all kinds of implications”, says Boellstorff, particularly for disabled people, who in Second Life can do the same things with their bodies as everyone else.
Susan Tenby of the San Francisco-based non-profit group TechSoup.org, which provides affordable technology products to other non-profits, remembers the instant she realised Second Life’s potential for people with disabilities. “For me, the ‘Aha!’ moment was when I stumbled upon a [virtual] quadriplegics’ meeting,” she says. She found people there who were severely disabled in real life but able to walk or even fly in Second Life. “I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute, these are real people. This isn’t just a game.'” It inspired her to start Nonprofit Commons, which offers, among other things, free virtual office space and furniture to non-profits wishing to set up shop in Second Life.
One of those groups is the Transgender Resource Center (TRC), which was started by William Wise, and it is likely that its work there has already had an impact in the real world. Staffed with volunteer avatars, the TRC provides counselling to transgendered people, something that has the power to save lives. “People with gender concerns are at a higher risk of suicide than the general population,” says Melady Preece, a clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who studies social groups within Second Life, including the TRC. “I have no doubt that the volunteers at the TRC have prevented, whether knowingly or unknowingly, a number of suicide attempts.”
For more than a year, Tenby has also hosted weekly meetings at the Commons, where people from around the world meet to discuss challenges facing humanity. She says these meetings benefit from being virtual: conversations still occur in real time, but geographic and social barriers disappear. For example, on 22 June, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation, a $6 billion philanthropic organisation based in Chicago, Illinois, hosted a discussion in its own virtual amphitheatre that explored how virtual worlds could bring about social change. Tenby mentions how she found herself standing next to the president of the foundation, an opportunity that doesn’t often arise in real life.
Because Second Life avoids such real-world limitations, it also allows people to step into the shoes of others to raise awareness of their fate. For example, political activists are already exploring this through a simulation of Guantanamo Bay that encourages Second Life visitors to consider the plight of inmates there (see “I feel your pain”).
There are some who are yet to be convinced of Second Life’s ability to produce change in the real world. “I think the jury is still out,” says Dave Pentecost of the Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York, an organisation that offers arts, athletic and career skills to teenage girls.
One problem is that the benefits are only available to those with access to computers, broadband connections and the keyboard skills required to control avatars. He also points out that although the income generated from virtual activities such as selling virtual goods is real, it isn’t yet “compelling enough to pull people out of poverty”.
There is also another challenge facing Second Life do-gooders. The presence of real money means the world is increasingly becoming a magnet for people who want to make a fast buck, while the earnest attitudes of some residents are provoking a backlash from those who would rather make trouble. We will be investigating virtual abuse and misbehaviour in next week’s instalment of New Scientist‘s virtual worlds report.
I feel your pain
You are inside a C17 military transport plane, your hands shackled. A black hood drops over you, and the screen goes dark. Soon you hear the sounds of a plane landing, and see glimpses of light through your hood. A prison official shouts “Shut up!” and there is clanging of metal against metal. Eventually, you end up kneeling inside a cage, with barbed-wire fencing all around.
“It’s a slightly visceral experience,” says Nonny de la Peña. The Los Angeles-based documentary film-maker has developed a version of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay inside the virtual world of Second Life, together with Peggy Weil of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Their aim is to simulate what it is like to be detained without recourse to legal help. “You can bring home the idea of what it means to have your habeas corpus stripped,” says de la Peña.
When you enter the installation, your avatar is offered an orange prison suit and a head-up display (HUD), a virtual object that allows the prison authorities to control the movements of your avatar and what you see. Activate it and your vision goes blank, as if you are shrouded by a hood. You lose control of your avatar and can be virtually pulled to any location. The virtual prison also shows documentary movies about Guantanamo Bay, and will soon feature avatars controlled by constitutional attorneys and representatives of detainees, who will talk with visitors.
De la Peña says there are other places that might be replicated, such as the US-Mexico border or the Palestinian territories. “Those are places with significant social issues that are being played out all the time,” she says. “I think the potential for activism and change is amazing.”
Weil says such simulations are “more powerful” than a library or museum, because they exist 24 hours a day, and anyone from around the world can enter, keeping issues alive even when they fall out of the public eye.
