When Worlds Collide

A good one, if brief, from Richard Katz:

The emergence of virtual worlds, synthetic worlds, and immersive worlds is a social and technical movement of great importance. Although personally I have yet to be moved to construct a virtual mini-me, I recognize that these environments will become incredibly rich and nuanced—nearly real, in fact. And I realize that the eventual near-reality of these environments has profound implications for higher education.

Colleges and universities are carbon creatures. If we ask donors to endow ideas, they tell us that they’ll endow buildings. We boast about how many assignable square feet of space we are constructing or where we can place the next building designed by the latest famous architect. Institutional leaders write their legacies in bricks and mortar. And our carbon footprint can be magnificent!

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The time is now to build and to experiment and to learn what it may mean to perform campus master planning when the master plan includes virtual spaces. We need to learn what it means to regulate access to institutional resources when those resources reside in virtual spaces. We need to understand the nature and limits of institutional authority inside the virtual classrooms and the virtual social spaces that bear the institution’s name.

Virtual spaces—like the Internet and the web—will change society profoundly. They will change institutions profoundly. The emergence of virtual, synthetic, and immersive worlds is a revolution, and it will likely arrive sooner than we can assimilate it. Like all revolutions, the emergence of virtual worlds will present opportunities for some and threats for others.

Don’t wait for worlds to collide. Plan, experiment, plan, experiment. Now.