[Air-L] avatar research ethics

[dtoews at uwindsor.ca]

thanks for the opportunity to clarify, and i guess add to my point:

(context: i was distinguishing between puppets and avatars and I said 
puppets don't interact with other puppets...)

it occurs to me that technically, of course, this is not true, puppets 
interact with other puppets - i'm imagining a puppet show :).  however, 
they do so strictly as vehicles of the puppeteers' intentions, or as 
vehicles of the puppeteers and/or audience's symbolic interpretations of 
those (on stage) interactions.

avatar-to-avatar interaction in SL is distinct from a puppet show.  here i 
would want to make a distinction between avatar use in SL, compared to 
avatar use in gaming or in disneyfied kids websites

SL avatar interaction is not like a puppet show because it is not a 'show' 
in the sense of a definite dramatic performance with a beginning, middle, 
and ending.  One avatar has to respond to the other avatar according to 
the way the first avatar's human user imagines is the attitude, not of the 
second avatar's human user, but of the second avatar, since there is no 
way to check the attitudes of the human user without disrupting the 
immersive quality of the virtual world.  And adding to the difference from 
human-to-human interaction in RL, in SL avatars, of course, compared to 
humans have a different repertoire of possible movements and expressions 
with different in-built limitations.  

So the human user of an avatar has to interpret the meaning of the other 
avatar's actions without being able to check the attitudes of the human 
user (or at least with an in-built discouragement in the world from doing 
so and a drastically-reduced ability to do so) in a context that is 
qualitatively different than a human context.  And all of this takes place 
in an environment in which it is quite possible for an avatar to be harmed 
by another avatar (in the sense of the abilities of one avatar being 
somehow impaired by that of another, quite independently of the relative 
states of the human users.)  

I would say then, ya, there is something very different about the context 
of interaction in SL.  If we agree that one avatar can harm another 
avatar, and researchers can only research as avatars, then there is indeed 
a need for a new kind of ethics protocol for research in SL. 

Its a bit of a catch-22 problem to gain research permissions, because we 
researchers would first have to develop the theory and practice of SL 
research for the ethics to become clear, but we need the ethics 
permissions to get started on the research.

I would be interested to know what anyone including those with SL research 
experience think about this...
______________________________
Dr. David Toews, PhD
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Windsor, Canada

If you do not keep the multiplicity of 
language-games in view you will 
perhaps be inclined to ask 
questions like: "What is a question?"
- Wittgenstein



William Bain <willronb at yahoo.com> 
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03/10/08 04:14 AM
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[Air-L]  avatar research ethics






David Toews wrote "however, puppets don't interact with other puppets" - 
and I ask: what about games like Shame Station? what about experiments 
like the "virtual Reprise of the Stanley Miligram Obedience Experiments"? 
But my real question is what are avatars, does definition depend on 
context - maybe that was clear enough already  :-) 
 
  Best wishes, Will
 
 


William Bain
PhD Student
Comparative Literature
Department of Spanish Philology
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
 
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