I very much liked this Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW on Wired News. As I said a little ago, the addition of voice to virtual worlds is not to be taken light-heartedly, and the article points to a side of the issue that I had nicely failed to target: how voice can de-virtualize a virtual presence.

As I see it, the issue will rapidly be overtaken by technology: as the Wired article implies, there is now an implicit demand for voice-morphing that will soon be satisfied, and exactly for the reason the article points out: we (dwellers or casual visitors of online universes) do enjoy the else-ness of being there.

The amount of “else-ness” should be more or less a personal choice (I foresee some group-pressure issues looming, but I am pretty sure they can be out-teched, so to say) if the online reality is to have any sense beyond being a replica of the offline world.

I am not saying that the online should or should not be a replica (although I think the online really ought not to replicate dumbly the offline) only that if the online wants to be different, then:

1. people should not be forced to bring online anything more of their offline self than they deem adequate
2. online personas ought to be judged only by their coherence and not by their adherence to an external model.

In other words, if I impersonate a female furry vampire online, judge my online persona only by its effectiveness, and don’t worry if I am a balding male vegan offline.

What is the advantage of doing this? Quite simply, the freedom of expressing oneself, up to the point of inventing a completely different self to use online. After all, we do not expect Othellos to actually strangle Desdemonas on stage: rather, we judge their show by its impact as a “show”; impact which (sorry, ILM) has little to do with how “realistic” the strangling is and a lot to do with the actors’ ability to convey emotions.

Unless we take an ideological stance to going online, we should allow the online world to evolve by its own rules, other than try to cage it into some predefined cultural frame.

Which brings me to some of my deepst-felt opinions on the current crop of online “worlds”, opinions which is about time I wrote about.

In her (extremely long but very well argued) essay
The Schism Around Voice: Multicasting vs. Broadcasting, the Second Life character known as Gwyneth Lllewelyn strongly supports the introduction of voice chat into Second life, due this June.
I do not oppose voice. I think people, and indeed avatars, should be able to choose freely their communication channels among the widest possible variety. Period.

I only have two objections. The first is this: voice per se has little to do with the progress of the Second Life environment, unless we adopt a low-profile and state that feature=progress, but that would really be a low-profile attitude.
Ms. Llewelyn herself, by the way, concedes that voice chatting is inferior (in terms of sheer performance) to text chatting: voice constrains communication to broadcasting, while text channels allow ample multicasting options.

I submit that multicasting (in the text-chat form which is the only possible, short of telepathy) emerges out of deep cultural needs and not as a low-tech, pro tempore substitute for voice. I doubt that whoever has experienced how effective, time-saving and malleable multicasting can be will gladly abandon it in favor of more traditional voice speech.

Our business and our culture need multicasting just as strongly as they need virtual social environments, possibly even more so.

My second objection is to this remark that Ms. LLewelyn makes:

Second Life, just like real life, will lose the extraordinary breakthrough of creating one of the first true real time multicasting environments.

Well, I do not think so. I do not see why the introduction of an audio channel should force anybody to abandon multicast text chatting. Surely Linden Lab is not going to be so dumb (pun half-intended) as to ban text chats upon the intodution of voice. Second, people will freely choose, and this will happen conversation-wise, whichever channel they deem most suitable for their communiction needs.

Voice could be successful among so-called “newbies”, but the more experienced users will hardly make it their only (or their main, imho) option. Because communication is so key to a virtual presence, the more experienced a user will grow, the more sophisticated his communication will become.

I do not think voice is such a great breakthrough. I even see little reason for it, apart from the usual “everybody else is doing it”. Voice will be another tool, possibly a useful one, in the kit of the Second Life denizen. Good. But Linden Lab would make a terrible mistake to put too much long-term value in voice.

Voice is to virtual realities as colour is to faxes: nice to have, but you won’t lose your sleep over not having it.
Second Life faces much tougher challenges, and ones not easily solved by throwing in a library or two and upgrading the servers. Actually, the toughest challenges do not involve upgrading SL’s servers, but its culture, currently soaked in realism, anthropomorphism and the reproduction of reality. This is a dangerous and costly path leading nowhere. We’ll have voice, then we’ll upgrade the 3d rendering of surfaces, then we’ll see more realistic avatars, then…

The path ends when two perfectly realistic avatars meet in a fully realistic 3d environment with force feedback or, in other words, when you and I meet at a pub and have a pint.

We already have one “perfectly real” reality, and we do not go online to find a second one. What we want is something different, and possibly more. Linden Lab should certainly try to appeal to the most immediate and superficial needs of the next many millions of its citizens, of course. Nonetheless, its long-term survival will not depend on how well it is a “second” life but in how well it is “another” life, altogether more diverse from the “real” one and (this is the crucial point) free from its limitations.

I make a point to use quotes when I speak of “virtual” economies (meaning the economical side of online worlds). As a matter of fact, I think there is nothing virtual in them:

1. “real” money is traded for local currency upon entry
2. local currency is payed for services or goods
3. local currency then traded for “real” money upon leaving the world.

All this is so unvirtual that the owners/builders/creators strive to make sure they get a small percentage on every of the above steps. In terms of GDP, SecondLife would already be the 120th-some country, and there are all signs that this rating will improve.

The wider public’s little familiarity with online worlds is the only reason why journalists insist on adding an adjective when dealing with this kind of economy. Is this kind of economy new? OK. Under- (or maybe ill-) regulated? Could well be. Virtual? Not at all.

If we insist on dubbing virtual the economy of online worlds, on the grounds that “no physical object or action is exchanged”, or that “this so-called online-world currency is actually coloured pebbels”, we should remember that the gold standard has long been dropped and that the “real” money in your pocket has only the value that is agreed for it in the neverending hubbub of global markets.
As for your credit cards, well, their level of “reality” is already the same as that of the “colored pebbles” of online worlds.

Where does all this leas us? A couple simple conclusions:

1. “virtual” economies are already real
2. market pressure will make “virtual” and “real” economies merge in a global market, just like national economies.

The problem is not whether income in online worlds will or will not be taxed. I submit that if online worlds are to (continue to) exist as something more than a gaming venue/temporary fad, then income in those worlds will be taxed, just as is the case in any other world.

Here are a few ideas I have been working on:

1. we should be acknowledging that online income already is taxed, albeit indirectly, via the commissions we pay to various plastic/electronic money middlemen
2. also, we may soon recognise that online income is taxed by the wrong subject: the economic middleman who enables the transaction, not by a state

The taxation issue will soon be raised, and strongly. This will be different than simply taxing a new economic activity, because online worlds are places, not (just) activities. Why not imagine an online world with a strong social identity upping the ante and declaring that it is, in fact, an independent territory, not subject to taxation from the outside? Yes, the computer the world exists on is in country X, and the activities surrounding that computer are subject to taxes and regulations. But the world inside the computer is a different story. We have already seen weirder things than the one I am suggesting, as in the case of Sealand or in other territorial disputes or unrecognised, self-proclaimed state entities.

We should remember, though, that almost every current state entity began its life as self-proclaimed, and many have remained unrecognised until they eventually were.

When money is involved, solutions are found, one way or another. Why not imagine something similar to customs regulations for the movement of money across states?

What should a national state worry about more: that I earn a hundred billion LindenDollars in Second Life or that I trade that fake money for some Real World currency?

And what should those who claim to have “a life online” worry about more: that money generated online gets taxed at the threshold of Reality or that the online world becomes nothing more than a casino?

Good old Wired ran an article on virtual taxation a few weeks ago.

Of course, I read a few comments on the desirability of taxing the so-called virtual economies but a point seems to me to be missing from them: I think we are so used at being taxed that we overlook the reason behind taxation in the first place.

Taxes are needed to provide the government with resources to pay for the services citizens use and need.

Now, let’s look at the situation: I earn money in, say, Second Life. To do so, I use SL’s own resources, plus a little telecommunication resources, plus my wn time and energy. We can agree that

• I should not be taxed for using my own time
• the telecom infrastructure, if public, is already paid for with my actual taxes, and if private, is funded by my telecom bill
• the virtual world’s resources, of course, are a service I pay to to its owners directly (as in the form of LindenDollar purchases in SL).

So, on what grounds is the government trying to tax me? Besides, just which government?

• the government who owns the land where I sit and type?
• the government who owns the land where SL’s servers sit?
• …?

I see a jurisdiction problem here, hairier than in the traditional hacker/smuggler/pornographer cases, because, in those cases, cyberspace is used to commit crimes in the “real” world. In the case of the “virtual” economies, everything takes place in cyberspace.

So, government may want to tax me on the same grounds as he taxes me for winning in a casino. Maybe.

And, unlike many other cases of the past, what is at stake here is not cyber rights, but good old cash. The unalienable right to the pursuit of (economic) happiness.

And I submit that at least one great nation was born out of tax revolt… (to be continued)