Mr Pixel Goes to Washington

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Introduction

Good morning Chairman Markey, Vice Chair Doyle, Ranking Member Stearns and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for allowing me this time with you.

My name is Dr. Larry Johnson and I have an avatar.

I also have the privilege of leading the New Media Consortium, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit association of more than 250 world-class colleges, universities, and museums focusing on emerging technologies. Among the many exploratory projects we do, for more than two years we have led the largest educational project of its kind in any virtual world, one that involves hundreds of institutions and over 7,500 educators and students working and learning in the virtual world of Second Life®. This project is self-sustaining, and recovers all its costs via operations and activities conducted within that virtual space.

My comments to you here are the reflection of the voices of both this community as well as those of the larger NMC membership, whom I polled as to what they would want to have you consider as I prepared this statement. They see the work they do in Second Life as merely another facet of the work they are doing on their campuses — and that is the first point I hope to leave with you this morning about the nature of virtual worlds. Any dichotomy drawn between activities in the real world and that of the virtual world is artificial at best. Behind every avatar is a living thinking person, and in the case of my community, we see little reason to distinguish one’s virtual identity from any other aspect of their identity. I am the same person, whether you encounter me here in this room, or on the NMC’s campus in Second Life.

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My second point speaks to the notions of reality and unreality. Whatever happens in a virtual space, the space itself simply extends our notions of the real world, just as the web extends our notions of the network. A virtual world like Second Life or Project Wonderland is not a game, serious or otherwise, and referring to the work done in these spaces as games limits both the potential for the technology and the work it is enabling. After two years of focused research and demonstration projects, we see these spaces as nothing less than the evolution of the Internet from the flat two-dimensional web in which it now resides into three dimensions, with all the richness and depth that implies.

My third and most important point about the nature of virtual worlds is this: The emerging landscape of virtual worlds represents as profound an opportunity, as profound a driver of changes in the ways we think, learn, and work, as any technology that has ever preceded it — and more so.

Virtual worlds are already bridging borders across the globe to bring people of many cultures and languages together in ways very nearly as rich as face-to-face interactions; they are already allowing the visualization of ideas and concepts in three dimensions that is leading to new insights and deeper learning; and they are already allowing people to work, learn, conduct business, shop, and interact in ways that promise to redefine how we think about these activities — and even what we regard as possible.

Just as the world wide web has unfolded over the last 15 years to erase boundaries between us and become part of the very fabric of our lives, over the next 15 years, virtual worlds will rapidly evolve into a rich three-dimensional extension of ourselves that will have profound impacts on the ways we interact, communicate, learn, work, shop, and conduct business.