Collective Intelligence: Identity in a MOO Environment Kristi van Riet (Speech at the Doors of Perception 3 Conference) Table of Contents: Summary Introduction What is a MOO? In Memoriam Some Practical Sides What's in a Name? * * * Summary Kristi van Riet is director of Van Riet consulting and webmaster/art director of the Netherlands Design Institute website. She asks: what contribution can the Internet make to the sharing of knowledge and experience that sustainability demands? For a year, she spent several hours a day in various MOOs (real-time, text-based virtual environments.) Out of this intensive experience, she has distilled some of the essential advantages and handicaps of the MOO, especially with regard to the issue of identity. Van Riet distinguishes two kinds of MOO use, one curious and experimental, the other more down-to-earth, devoted to the exchange of knowledge. What are the ingredients needed for a real discussion in a MOO? What kind of behaviours emerge in response to new conditions of time and proximity imposed by the MOO? Among her examples are a MOO funeral, and a university class partially taught in a MOO. Focusing on the use of aliases, she criticises the refusal of many MOO inhabitants to take full responsibility for their assumed identity, thus creating a lack of content and an overabundance of meaningless encounters. * * * Introduction The MOO Josephine just spoke about looks like this: not very attractive, actually... I will talk about identity on the Internet, about how valuable it actually is to use technology not to create new creatures, but to become a person. I'll start by giving a brief explanation of what a MOO actually is. * * * What is a MOO? A MOO can be best described as a virtual environment where you write conversations instead of having them verbally. It is Real Time. They differ in a number of ways from normal conversations, the most obvious being the absence of body language and intonation. This problem is solved rather primitively in the MOO, with eMOOtions and smileys. ; ) I counted 132 different smileys. They form a crude counterpart to emotions and facial expressions; nonetheless, with all their limitations, they possess an enormous evocative power. eMOOtions are single lines, prefab or not, used to express your current mental state. Other differences with Real Life communication are: Time -- it takes a while longer for the message to arrive, as it must be written. One seeming detail here is very important: the fact that silence is meaningless. Silence often carries an important message, but in the MOO you have to use an action to indicate passivity or silence. Doubt, corrections and so forth never arrive; everyone seems equally sure of their words. Proximity -- there is no spatial physical order. You're simply there or not. You are never closer to somebody or further away from somebody else. Social hierarchy basically does not exist. Identity -- it is never sure that somebody is who he or she claims to be. In most MOOs, the inhabitants are disguised, have nicknames and phoney descriptions of themselves. There are two different sorts of MOO use. One is curious, searching and experimental. Seeing what freedoms you can permit yourself in the disguise of a created character, putting your creativity to the test. You can make immense discoveries; change your gender and acquire insight in the opposite sex; discover and develop your literary talents; entrust your best-kept secrets to another and feel relieved. You make up an identity, and armed with anonymity, you research borders you wouldn't have dreamed of approaching in Real Life. Certain professions can profit from it in another way. For authors, this is a splendid way to work out main characters and for actors, a medium for internalisation of roles. In principle, anything is possible if you are anonymous. No danger lurks: you're free. But the chatter game loses its appeal quickly. It loses its elasticity and becomes predictable. Actually, it forces you to go to ever greater extremes, to act stranger, take on increasingly fantastic roles, or plumb a role to such depths that you no longer have a real bond with it. And then it starts to lack impact. Another way is to use the MOO to exchange knowledge -- to carry on discussion with soulmates or colleagues. And it is here, ultimately, that the power of the medium is to be found: in the possibility of having a real discussion. But for real discussions, you need a number of ingredients, which in most MOO's are insufficiently recognised or exploited. For example, in most cases, when you announce your presence as a MOO inhabitant, you are asked which nickname you wish to use: not whether, but WHICH! I believe that a first step towards developing MOO environments towards an interesting shared space, is using your own name. In the future, I would like to see more MOO environments designed for human beings. * * * In Memoriam One night, I think about a month after I began snooping around in MOOs, I received the news that a woman with whom I'd spoken once in a while had died. In Real Life. She died in a car accident. A special space was created in memoriam. People gathered to talk about her. It was very different from a regular funeral, not as sacred or solemn, but to me it was no less impressive. In fact, it was the first moment of insight into the reality of the people I was communicating with; the moment of realisation that the MOO was not only an experimental, creative and interesting game -- it was full of real people that could die. This meant that they were people that could influence my real life, and I had to take it more seriously. For a year, I spent several hours almost every single day in different MOO environments. Tired nights, with a beer and a cigarette at my screen, chatting with the whole world. Initially, I immediately and hastily picked a name, like most people do. But shortly after that funeral, I changed my alias, Brabantia, back to Kristi. It clearly isn't as interesting to communicate to fantastic characters as it is to see how people can become themselves in this environment. * * * Some Practical Sides As Kristi, I learned that a MOO environment can be very practical in a professional context. Last year, I was visited at various times by speakers from the Doors of Perception 2 conference in the MOO. The discussions were about questions like What did you think about the summary I sent you? and How is that other speaker that touches on the same things I will do? In the latter case, I set up a meeting between the two speakers that shared the same point of view and after discussing the matter in the MOO, they both changed their speeches in a way that was satisfying for both of them. Now, I'm not saying this couldn't have been solved without the MOO, but it definitively proved to be a good means: fast, cheep, and social. Florian Brody, one of these speakers, told me recently that it turned out to be especially profitable for him, since he's now teaching at the University in Pasadena and doing this partly from Vienna, through the MOO. They actually taught a class from the computer at the Balie cultural center in Amsterdam. It doesn't take long to feel at home in a MOO. It's incredibly easy. * * * What's in a Name? It is not like I am absolutely against using a different identity in the MOO -- on the contrary. But the often-heard complaint of lack of content and an overabundance of meaningless encounters is partly due to the plain and simple lack of identity. The liberating feeling of using an alias ultimately results in complete freedom from any responsibility at all. By taking a nickname, you can free yourself from the burden of your personality. This creates the advantage of limitless freedom. But at the same time, by doing so, you deny the one thing from your own identity you can digitally take along: you have no face, no voice; you have only your name. Vulnerability is a precondition for life in any social environment; the need for trust emerges from it; both of these things begin with the taking of responsibility, and thus of identity. The other day in the park at twilight, a man suddenly came out of a bush and showed me his penis. In Dutch, we call these people `pencil vendors' (potloodventers). But, in fact, he's not selling anything: the main one who benefits from this exchange is the flasher -- he showed it and knows I've seen it. It is the anonymity of the flasher that allows him to indulge in this ultimately one-sided act. In a sense, the flasher is a metaphor for a lot of MOO environments. If this is taken as the sole model for communication in the MOOs, they run a risk of becoming as much of a paradise for cowards as certain dim city parks can be. To make it a meaningful environment, suitable for stimulating collective intelligence, I believe you have to come out and make your presence felt.

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