A Silicon Silicon Valley? (Virtual Innovation and Virtual Geography)
Philip Evans · Innovations Technology Governance Globalization · 2007
Virtual worlds represent the "collapse" of geography, as Cory Ondrejka asserts.They are also its vindication.In the large, as with other Internet platforms, virtual worlds bring together people who in reality are dispersed across the globe.And within the virtual world people fly or teleport with an ease of which the patrons of real-world red-eyed air transportation can only dream (if they can sleep at all).This amounts to the "death of distance" among both real-world participants and also among their alter-ego avatars.But in the small, it is precisely geography, or "spatiality" as we might call it, that makes virtual worlds interesting relative to other Internet platforms.I can strike up a conversation with the person at the virtual water cooler, bump into a stranger and ask directions, guess at someone's personality from their appearance, ask someone lingering hesitantly by the dance floor to tango, recognize an acquaintance on the street, look someone in the eye and gain their confidence, or conspicuously cross the road to avoid them.All of these nuanced communications require space, adjacency, direction, the physicality of bodily position.The real world is by far our best platform for this kind of emotional broadband.Indeed we value it so much, that we pay the price of long-distance travel to indulge in the richness of short-distance physical co-location.The unique potential of virtual worlds lies in their promise of the latter without the former: the benefits of spatial proximity without the costs of spatial distance.That is what makes them interesting.Interesting-to borrow Richard Bartle's famous taxonomy-for "hearts", "clubs" "diamonds" and "spades": people respectively seeking friendship, a fight, a world to explore or opportunities to make stuff. 1 But interesting as a platform for real-world innovation? Philip EvansA Silicon Silicon Valley?