Metanomics 101 Post-Event Archive, Analysis and Discussion
The first Metanomics program and related materials are now compiled here.
On September 17th 2007, Professor Robert Bloomfield presented "Metanomics 101" in Second Life. This serves as an overview of Metanomics and a preview of what is to come.
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| Metanomics 101 revised.ppt | 61.5 KB |
New subfield of metanomics
Thank you for your excellent introduction to Metanomics. I like the different ways of looking at virtual worlds that you have identified: immersionist, augmentationist and experimentalist. There is one subfield that I am missing, however. It is a field closely related to experimentalist, but instead of taking the virtual world as a laboratory, we try to learn from the virtual world as such. The key question here is: Which new ways of working do we see in the virtual world that could be transferred to the real world? Byron Reeves & Thomas Malone (together with Nick Yee and others) recently did some work along those lines in the area of leadership (you can find the report at http://www.seriosity.com/downloads/Leadership_In_Games_Seriosity_and_IBM) They may be interesting as speakers in the series. It is also the perspective I am taking in my research, although I don't have a good name for this subfield yet. Any suggestions?
Jeroen.
Subfields of Metanomics
I would view the Seriosity study as being a form of augmentationist metanomics, in that the authors are studying how people can and do use virtual worlds to learn new skills--that is, they are studying how people use the metaversed as augmentationists.
If people start taking the immersionist/augmentationist/experimentalist distinction seriously (which I find quite useful), then it might make sense to examine whether we should consider "experiments studying the metaverse" and "experiments using the metaverse to study the real world" as different subfields.
But first, we wil have to get people to stop snickering every time they hear the word "metaverse."
Rob
Subfield of metanomics
I wouldn't necessarily say the Seriosity study is augmentationist. I don't think it is about learning new skills in a virtual worlds. One of the core statements in the study is that it is the environment itself that makes leadership easier ("change the game, not the players").
The experiment I propose is one where we mimic elements of a metaverse environment in an organisation (without actually using virtual world technology) and see if that leads to: more effective collaboration, better leadership, more knowledge exchange, etc.
But maybe I'm stretching the concept to its limits.
Jeroen.
Value
The format of Metanomics 101 worked well--the voice stream and slides carried the content while allowing the assembled throng to text chat--good multitasking. The most interesting comments I "heard" were at the end of the session, voiced by several avatars. The notion was that a lot of attention was being paid to money, and little was given to value.
I didn't catch the name of who said that art is the most valuable aspect of SL, but I have to agree that it is one of the most interesting reasons to be in-world, along with the live music performances. But with all the talk about real estate, commodities, financial markets and profitability, even with the in-depth analysis of Prokofy Neva's excellent commentary, there seems to be little attention given to what virtual worlds are contributing as platforms of real value to the culture.
The strongest and most durable economies in Second Life, I would suspect, are in the not-for-profit sector. I don't have the data at my fingertips, but I believe there are over 300 institutions now operating campuses in SL. It is widely believed in the education community that 3D immersion (or augmentation) gives huge benefits and is the future at all levels, K-12 to higher ed. If you missed the Education Track at SLCC this year or at State of Play V, there are videos and proceedings.
If one is looking to quantify the ROI of the nfp sector, it will take considerable modeling, as the future return on education is huge. It goes far beyond the money spent and received by the student and institution, as Gary Becker showed decades ago, and it might be useful to apply Human Capital analysis to the SL economy.
When analyzing the SL economy it is also important to take into account not just the in-world transactions. For example, if someone makes a transaction of 5 million Lindens, you might pay attention to what business they are in. In the case I'm thinking of, they are artists, and the money comes in a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.
People are paying some artists over $L100,000 in-world for virtual works which can't exist off the LL servers, and which in effect the buyers do not own. What is the value that people derive from this? I addressed some of the factors that distinguish virtual markets from real world ones in The Art World Market of Second Life, and many of the factors apply to commodities and entities other than art.
Richard
http://slartmagazine.com
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