 is a
sociologist in the Computing Science Laboratory
at PARC and a member of the PlayOn project team.
He specializes in the micro-analysis of social
interaction and practice in virtual worlds and in
real life. In the area of online game research,
he examines the mechanics of avatar-mediated
interaction as well as shared player practices
through screen-capture-video analysis and virtual
ethnography. He has conducted video-based
ethnographies in a variety of settings including
massively multiplayer online games, copy shops,
and survey research call centers.
What is your
greatest fear for the future of networked
technologies? I'm worried that
people won't leave their houses. I'm
worried that people will no longer travel and no
longer venture out into the real world because
they are so engrossed in the virtual world. And I
wouldn't have thought this 15 years ago, but
we're seeing it in other aspects of life.
Children today don't go out and play as much.
There's a perception that it's more
dangerous outside, and at the same time the
things that they can do inside in terms of
virtual worlds and games are more interesting and
compelling. If that continues – if the
physical world gets less appealing and the
virtual world gets more appealing – I think
we can expect to see people spending all of their
waking hours there, at least some people. What is your most
fervent hope for the future of networked
technologies? I want a kind of a simple
thing. I want to be able to have a face-to-face
conversation with somebody on the other side of
the world that captures the behavioral nuances of
a face-to-face conversation. I'll know
it's not a face-to-face, I know I can't
reach out and hug them, but it will be compelling
enough that I'll feel I'm sitting across
the table from them. What technology
will have the greatest impact on our everyday
lives the next 10 years? Ubiquitous
computing and smart materials. The very materials
we make our physical world out of are embedded
with sensors and actuators and processors, so we
can make them do things. We can program them to
know when I'm sitting in a chair when
I've gotten up out of the chair, the
environment knows what I'm doing so, for
better or for worse, it can help me out or it can
maybe harm me if somebody else is using the data
for nefarious purposes. We (will be) used to
inanimate objects being smart objects. They might
just be sitting there, but they are recording and
making a record of my action in that space and my
interaction with them. Looking out more
than 10 years, what development will have the
greatest impact on society? One would be
ways that I could input myself into a virtual
world. Currently I use a keyboard, I use a mouse,
I might use a gamepad. I want to be freed from
all that and be able to express myself using my
body in a natural way without lots of wires and
things like that. So I'm imagining
nanosensors or a variety of technologies where I
could project myself into a digital world with no
wires attached. What do you think
policymakers should do to ensure a positive
future for networked technologies?
Figuring out what we're going to do with
digital property rights. In current virtual
worlds, users aren't content just to consume
content the major companies produce. They want to
produce themselves, and so you have a conflict in
all the world. Player content is not allowed, or
if it is there's still a lot of legal
questions as to who owns that content, and I
think we're just working that out now.
That's going to be a biggie, because if you
spend a lot of time in a world, making things,
investing yourself in it, you want some
security. | 
