Infinite Reality: The Hidden Blueprint of Our Virtual Lives

by Jim Blascovich

According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, kids spend eight hours per day on average outside of the classroom using digital media. This translates to billions of hours per week.

Avatar’s fiction is supported by science: dozens of psychological experiments have shown that people change after spending even small amounts of time wearing an avatar. A taller avatar increases people’s confidence, and this boost persists later in the physical world. Similarly, a more attractive avatar makes people act warm and social, an older avatar raises people’s concern about saving money, and a physically fit avatar makes people exercise more.

The vice president of Digital Convergence at IBM—that they have one is notable—predicted that all of their employees will have avatars in five years.

Forget walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, just move an inch using her senses and you would perceive reality differently.

www.invisiblegorilla.com.)

The takeaway message here is that the mind decides if perceptions are real. If the mind buys into an experience, it deems it “real,” otherwise it judges it to be unreal. And, if enough people share the perception that an alternative reality is real, then who’s to say it isn’t? The difference between heaven, which the great majority of Americans believe is real, and leprechauns, which are fiction to most, is determined largely by consensus, as opposed to scientific proof.

Amazingly, on the first day, his perceptual system adjusted by re-inverting his view—even though the glasses were sending him images upside down, his brain interpreted the signal as right-side up.

At first, research participants generally see the physical world as if they are standing on their heads. However, in an unexpectedly short time, their perceptual system adjusts and they see the world as they would without the lenses. When they take off the prism glasses, the grounded world, which, by definition, is right-side up, actually appears upside-down for a while.

of this primitive art. One argues that the paintings were made by ancient shamans, and she claims that shaman painters went into caves where they would self-induce trance states, perhaps with the aid of drugs, and paint images of their mental visions to share with those who would view them later. The second archaeologist argues that the ancient cave paintings revealed the fantasies of adolescents who made up most of the male population way back then. He points out as proof that their “graffiti” expressed powerful animals, hunting scenes, and highly sexualized depictions of women, themes also common to many motion pictures today. The third argues more mundanely that cave paintings, most of which involve animals, were created by early humans to magically

modern movies began appearing in the late nineteenth century, and that the first screening of a movie for an unfamiliar audience is often credited to Auguste and Louis Lumière, French brothers who in 1895 premiered a short film titled The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station. The reel plays, and you see that the camera shooting the film was placed very near the railroad tracks and captured a train’s motion as it approached, leaving the audience with the view of an oncoming train rushing toward them. Apparently, the sensation brought on by the film proved unbearably scary for many viewers in the audience, and some were said to have fled the building in which the movie was screened. Why such hysteria? The docent explains that the viewers weren’t accustomed to viewing movies, but they were used to seeing trains. They knew how big trains were and how messy it would be to be hit by one. They knew consciously that they couldn’t be physically injured. But part of their minds reacted as if the trains were real,

When President Clinton was inaugurated, there were only about fifty Web sites.

TRACKING AND RENDERING

But just like Atari presaged the Xbox, Playstation, and Wii, networked online platforms such as World of WarCraft and Second Life provide strong hints as to where virtual social interaction is headed.

SLEIGHT

What is most important in virtual reality is the belief that a person holds about a human representation

. In general, if a person believes that a representation in virtual reality is an avatar, she will make an attribution of sentience and interact more or less as she would in a physical, face-to-face situation. On the other hand, if a person believes that the representation is an agent, the attribution of sentience is not as likely.

Is the person behind an avatar in Second Life the same person as the avatar? Most people wouldn’t bet on it.

CHAPTER EIGHT STREET SMARTS A DAY IN THE LIFE… Dave had a meeting at eight A.M. He felt completely alert the instant upon waking, and it took him only seconds to get into his brand-new suit. Los Angeles traffic wasn’t a concern, and he arrived at the conference room perfectly on time, where he sat with the rest of the corporate team. He’d decided the best path to getting a raise was the age-old strategy of flattering his two bosses, Mrs. Robinson and Mr. Figgs. Robinson was demonstrative, warm, and liked her subordinates to participate actively in meetings. Figgs was old-school—stoic and authoritative, and treated his subordinates like children who were to be seen and not heard. At the meeting, Dave played the chameleon, making

quiet and respectful to Mr. Figgs. At ten A.M.,

ETERNAL LIFE

One of the primary defense mechanisms to combat these subconscious reminders of mortality is to excessively support the culture to which one belongs. In laboratory studies, subconsciously terrified American participants display huge pro-American biases. They even punish people described as violating cultural norms, or go way out of their way to help people they know to be “patriots.” The idea is that supporting their cultural worldview is a way to make them immortal by proxy. In other words, they would attempt to bolster America while they’re alive; since they’re a part of America, so long as the stars and stripes survive, then a part of them lives on as well. The terrified subconscious provides itself with symbolic immortality by identifying with their country or culture, entities that are both larger and longer-lasting than the transient life of a single human.

Some have even suggested that inducing fear in citizens, such as increasing the number and severity of terror alerts, helps incumbents get reelected.

Who wouldn’t love to know that long after we’re dead, we’d still be able to touch the lives of our progeny generations down the road?

Sooner or later, artificial-intelligence technology will permit implementation of one’s personality traits and other psychological idiosyncrasies. Storage of every possible phoneme in one’s language, and in one’s own voice, will enable one’s eternal avatar to say things the physical self never even said.

So-called haptic devices capture one’s touch—how firm a handshake is, the way one hugs, and how one moves her hands. The overall result will be an avatar that looks and behaves like the person it represents, but can do so even when that person is no longer alive, sort of like Disney World’s Abraham Lincoln but with artificial intelligence and social-interaction capabilities. After one passes on, his great-great-great-grandchildren can enter a “holodeck,” sit on the long-deceased ancestor’s lap, tell him about their day, experience his avatar tell a story, give a hug, and provide advice. A quite reasonable facsimile of a person’s dynamic tendencies can be preserved indefinitely in virtual reality.

In 2001, we began a research project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and ...

Even after we told the participants that we couldn’t store the avatars, or that we couldn’t even build them yet to be exact replicas with the technology we had in the lab, a number of them proceeded to contact us long after the study was over in order to find out if we still had their avatars. Obviously, people took the notion of storing their digital selves very seriously.

Mr. Redenbacher passed away in 1995, but there was enough video and photographic material from decades of his public life to build a 3-D model of his head and body, and to use sound clips to create a persuasive analog of his voice. Consequently, in a surprising move, in 2006, the owner of the brand, ConAgra, released a commercial with a virtual Orville Redenbacher dancing around with headphones on, popping popcorn, and exclaiming, “Can you believe this little baby holds thirty gigs?” as he held up an iPod. The avatar-like spokesman was attempting to make a comparison to the lightness of his popcorn. Other commercials in the past spliced video together by taking actors out of context—for example, by overlaying a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner on Fred Astaire’s dance partner. However, Redenbacher was perhaps the first major example of someone reanimating a completely novel action on a reconstructed 3-D model of a deceased public figure. It may be the case that Mr. Redenbacher would have been excited about the idea; perhaps he even endorsed similar ideas before passing away. His grandson, Gary, claimed that “Grandpa would go for it. He was a cutting-edge guy. This is a way to honor his legacy.”

” The ethical controversy surrounding the possible animation of one’s avatar in nefarious ways has received ample attention in the legal community. For example, three decades after his death, John Lennon appeared in a manipulated public service announcement for One Laptop per Child, proclaiming: Imagine every child, no matter where in the world they were, could access a universe of knowledge. They would have a chance to learn, to dream, to achieve anything they want. I tried to do it through my music, but now you can do it in a very different way. You can give a child a laptop, and more than imagine, you can change the world. In this instance, his widow, Yoko Ono, gave permission to the advertising agency to carry out the pro bono work, but, of course, there was massive outrage expressed by fans over the manipulation of the dead artist’s image and voice.

interviews with him), and emotions. One of the graduate students, who spent more than thirty hours per week with Schwarzkopf for a year, collecting data, noted that the doppelgänger even used speech idiosyncrasies, for example, his signature salutation, “Keep the peace!” In the figure below, Dr. Schwarzkopf’s avatar mimics the expression of disgust from the actual Schwarzkopf. This system is functional and is being used by current, less senior NSF officials to leverage the expertise that Schwarzkopf achieved over decades of service. He has given them carte blanche to use his avatar as they see fit. The avatar actually forms new relationships with the people it meets, and its understanding of the world at large changes based on its conversations. In this sense, virtual Schwarzkopf forms with physical people lasting relationships that physical Schwarzkopf never had.

Recently, we were contacted by a high-level manager at a large defense contractor, who was pursuing projects to develop an “Avatar DNA” identification test, that is, a way to be sure that if one is talking to an avatar of a given person, he or she could be sure

that the person matched the avatar.

Google never forgets. Google backs up, or “caches,” the entire Internet frequently. Once something is online, it is practically impossible to erase all records of it. People may have some control over access to their digital information; for example, who can see their photographs on Facebook. However, they cannot control what other people do with this information. A person can limit access to her photographs to only a few people. But it takes only one person to e-mail it to someone else or post it on Picasa—once the cat is out of the bag, there is no putting it back.

Unlike with physical footprints left in the sand, there are no waves to wash away digital ones.

Today, digital media provide new tools that allow people to act in ways, good and bad, that have never been as numerous or as accessible in the past.

One project they describe is run by a Canadian mother and her son for a Zambian service organization whose mission is improving the lives of homeless children. Volunteering from home, mom and son use the Internet to identify, contact, and arrange logistics for potential donors anywhere in the world seeking to help the African children. True, volunteering isn’t anything new, and the Internet is just one more tool to make volunteering easier and more effective. However, this case is especially noteworthy because the son has cerebral palsy with spastic quadriplegia and is confined to a wheelchair. But he still can access the Internet and give of his time, illustrating that people with special needs can volunteer via the Internet in ways they would be unable to do offline. In virtual reality, the son could even play soccer with those children.

How many people needed a Kindle or an iPad just a few years ago? How many people feel such needs now? Digital technologies typically do not lose their capabilities so much as become obsolete because of newer, more powerful ones.

“You have to be someone before you can share yourself.”

Of course, Internet addiction is not limited to Southeast Asia. Rather, South Korea is arguably the “canary in the coal mine”—an early warning of worldwide addiction problems. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that addictions occur in the United States. On October 15, 2009, USA Today described a female marketing contractor hopelessly addicted to the game FarmVille on Facebook. She can’t sleep at night due to worry over her virtual crops and she uses it to escape from city life. She is not alone. On October 27, 2010, a mother in Florida pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for shaking her three-month-old infant, ultimately causing his death, because his crying interrupted her FarmVille play. FarmVille is one of the fastest-growing games ever, with more than 80 million players in 2010.

On August 10, 2005, BBC News reported that a South Korean man died after playing almost nonstop for fifty hours, collapsing of exhaustion in an Internet café. On May 27, 2010, the Daily Telegraph reported that a fanatic French video-gamer hunted down and stabbed a rival who had killed his war-game avatar. The attack occurred not in the confines of the virtual game but on the victim’s physical doorstep. The Frenchman knocked on his rival’s door and stabbed him. On October 13, 2009, PC News reported that, in a fit of frustration, a Swedish teenage boy allegedly stabbed a girl after an Internet glitch left him unable to play StarCraft online.

identification via “police lineups.” Compared to witnesses looking at suspects’ photographs, which is how approximately 75 percent of police lineups occur in the United States, a virtual sequence of suspects embedded in a re-creation of the crime scene itself can improve eyewitness accuracy. A witness wearing a head-mounted display and walking among the avatars can see them from novel angles. Moreover, she is able to get extremely close to their heads and faces—something actual witnesses are not only prevented from doing but are often afraid to do. If the crime occurred in a liquor store, the witness could view the lineup in a virtual re-creation of the liquor store without ever having to physically return to the scene of the crime. This is particularly useful for witnesses who would be traumatized by a return to the actual crime scene, or when the crime scene no longer exists (as is often the case with arson, for instance).

at least one chimpanzee, named Washoe, and one gorilla, named Koko, have been taught American Sign Language successfully.

First, avatars will become perceptually indistinguishable from their flesh-and-blood counterparts in terms of how they look, sound, feel, and smell. This is far from an outlandish claim, given how far virtual representations have come in the past decade.

Second, people’s control of their avatars will become automatic, without having to use any type of controller, keyboard, or even vocalization. Avatars will be manipulated via people’s everyday actions or thoughts, much like in The Matrix, where Neo’s avatar interacted with his brain via a neural jack plugged into the back of his head.

Third, avatars will be embodied and capable of touch. Whether via haptic devices attached to digital simulations, robots tele-operated by owners, or even biological clones that people’s minds can control, avatars will “walk among us” and interact with others who are present physically rather than digitally.

The notion of an afterlife is the cornerstone of most religions. There is a yin and yang to it for nearly all of them—for example, heaven and hell in Christianity. Typically, these constructs remain abstract and fuzzy for believers. Given that religious institutions have utilized every prior form of media, virtual reality seems likely to be used to create experiential afterlives—dare we say like “heaven” or “hell” on earth. Although Dante produced descriptive prose depicting the nature of hell in Inferno, virtual reality can enable his modern-day disciples to sample—that is, see, hear, touch, taste, and smell—his nine “circles” of hell. For one reason or another, such as atoning for sins, Christians may end up spending time in the place they are ultimately trying to avoid.

Chris Dede at Harvard University is one of the leading researchers investigating the viability of using virtual reality for learning. Dede has been creating virtual-reality learning scenarios for more than a decade. In his 2009 Science article, Dede discussed the educational advantages of immersing a student “within” a lesson housed in a virtual world.

In a very real sense, the right to own smart phones may become recognized as a human right. In unlikely places—Iran and China, for example—smart phones help provide citizens with rights to assembly and a free press. Even in the United States, rights to smart phones can be tied to the First and Second Amendments of the Bill of Rights. However, like all technologies, cell phones are subject to the dual-use problem. For as many lost, stranded, or injured people who are rescued or helped because of cell phones, there are people who are hurt, ostracized, or embezzled because of them. Indeed, the 9/11 attackers coordinated their terrorist acts on the doomed airplanes via cell phones.

There is evidence that even during tele-operation one can damage oneself. Currently, drone operators for the U.S. military are susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder.