Virtual Worlds

The term virtual world is commonly used to describe the spaces inhabited by people in computer-mediated environments, in which it is possible to interact with objects and others via text, audio, computer generated images, or film. Visions of virtual worlds occupied the imagination of early social network literary and academic authors. Its origins can be found in literary fiction, such as William Gibson's novel Neuromancer (1984), where cyberspace is imagined as the following:

… a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators … a graphic representation of data abstracted from the bank of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights receding.

[Page 930]Gibson's vision of virtual worlds has been articulated in various forms, from the futuristic film The Lawnmower Man (1992) to The Matrix (1999) to Avatar (2009). Each of these visions focuses on the enhanced social networking between people that is achieved by digital technology. Often, this interaction occurs via an avatar, which broadly describes a device that is used to represent the identity of the user, whether or not this identity has any real-world resemblance. The possibility of creating one's identity online has led to a considerable amount of research focusing on how identity is made manifest in virtual worlds and what this might reveal about people. In the last five years, the growth of social networks may be attributed in large part to the growth of new virtual worlds, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Second Life, which command vast audiences and achieve a degree of global—if regionally specific—connectivity between individuals that is unrivaled. The model of the social network within such worlds transforms traditional media formats, where broadcasters control the channels of communication. The social networks of the virtual world provide individual users with the means of communication and even encourage participants to alter the spaces to optimize connectivity.