historical roots // [digital] utopia and its relation to global issues

Digital utopianism, since its inception, has inherently looked towards the virtual world as the acme of its ideals and goals. In her book The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, Margaret Wertheim explores this fascination with the virtual world, stating at the outset that the champions of cyberspace "proffer this new digital domain as a realm in which we may realize a better life here on earth", claiming further that from the vantage of digital utopianists, cyberspace "becomes a place for the establishment of idealized communities that transcend the tyrannies of distance and that are free from biases of gender, race, and color."[C.32/P.283] The Internet (and the communication networks it enables) is thus viewed by cyber-enthusiasts as a place that not only functions to eliminate the confines of race, class, gender, and socio-economic status but also as a place that is "unfractured by national boundaries, a space where people of all nations can in theory mix together with mutual ease."[C.32/P.24] Citizens of the Internet are not bound to the bodily confines that have over human existence been the source for identity construction - rather, they are able to construct their lives in a manner akin to those in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, with the mind valued over physical characteristics of the body.

While this ability to define one's identity is intriguing to say the least, it is important to note that such fluidity is best understood in reference to utopian visions of virtual communities. Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, articulates a lineage of this philosophical stance in various periods of human history - "from Plato's cave in The Republic (c. 360BC) to Ray Bradbury's gripping "The Veldt" (1951) to Vernor Vinge's True Names (1980) to Neal Stephenson's 1992 Snow Crash (where the term "metaverse" was reputedly coined), textual articulations of virtual worlds are numerous and varied, frequently expressing the desire to be free of a troublesome physical body that hinders unfettered, bodiless intelligence."[C.33] The promise of a virtual world, a place we can access only through the use of advanced technology, is one that has been most eloquently articulated over the past half-century in relation to advances in information technology.

Due to technological limitations, the concept of a 'digital utopia' has often been restricted to what is better understood as virtual communities, manifesting networks through text as opposed to 3D worlds. This historically includes both Usenet (User Network) - the earliest incarnation of online interaction conceived in the late 1970s that focused on mini-communities based on subject matter - and Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and MUDs Object Oriented (MOOs) - online games derivative of the popular group role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. While both these incarnations have had immense impact on our understand of virtual communities, the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (or The WELL) is the first virtual community to be most directly informed by the philosophies of digital utopianism. Founded in 1985 by digital pioneers Steward Brand and Lawrence Brilliant, The WELL "carried forward a set of ideals, management strategies, and interpersonal networks" that had first formulated around Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, which itself was a central gathering place for "counterculturalists, hackers, and journalists."[C.30/P.41] Brand and his cohorts were quintessential digital utopinaists, coming to age during the era of Marshall McLuhan's seminal philosophical contribution of the Global Village. McLuhan argued that the "individual human body and the species as a whole were linked by a single nervous system" fueled by the expansion of electronic signals across the globe.[C.30/P.53] Brand and the other members of "The US Company" (USCO) - an art tribe Brand belonged to that was equally active in exploring ideas of "technology and mystical community' as they were the LSD scene in San Francisco during the 1960s - was similarly influenced by the writings and architecture of futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller[C.30/P.56]. Both Fuller and McLuhan "embraced the pleasures and power associated with the products of technocracy" without becoming slaves to any technological system[C.30/P.57]. Rather, Fuller and McLuhan both viewed technology as a means to be co-opted for a greater good, uniting individuals rather than homogenizing them. Brand would keep this notion close to home, with a firm belief in networked systems and tools represented in the community and educational aspects of the Whole Earth Catalog. It was not until the 1980s that this fervor for interlinked communities would be translated online.

The WELL was designed as a place where like minded individuals could come to recreate the "countercultural ideal of a shared consciousness in a new "virtual community"", and although geographically based in San Francisco's Bay Area tech-scene of the mid-80s, the WELL represented a means for interaction between people who, while sharing similar interests, would otherwise have found communicating difficult if not impossible[C.30/P.142]. On the WELL, the first login screen encountered told users:
"You own your words. That means that you are responsible for the words that post on the WELL and that reproduction of those words without your permission in any medium outside of the WELL's conferencing system may be challenged by you, the author."[C.30/P.144]
While this disclaimer was initially created as a means to protect The WELL from liability issues, it also represented a distinct choice to value those ideas posted to The WELL as more than "object[s] of exchange" but rather as "representation[s] of its creator's consciousness." [C.30/P.145] This was in stark contrast to other computer conferencing systems of the time - Prodigy, CompuServe and General Electric's Genie system - which viewed information "as a commodity to be exchanged and users as consumers of information goods", often times attempting to cash-in on whatever value user generated content might have.[C.30/P.145]

In terms of community building and governance, the WELL prided individual expression in correlation with boundaries for a self-governing social system. Brand achieved this by giving "users the power of self-rule through information technology", allowing members to erase postings they didn't like from their own screens (while retaining the same postings for the community as a whole) through the use of the "Bozo filter" program.[C.30/P.145] Similarly, users were able to go back and erase postings they may have felt remorse for posting in the first place.[C.30/P.145] Most importantly, there was little top down enforcement of rules - although the WELL retained the right to remove users if they saw fit, mangers "used that power only three times in the system's first six years, and each time they later allowed the member they had removed to return."[C.30/P.145] It was, to an extent, self-governing.

The WELL, as a result, became a beacon of forward thinking and progressivism online, creating a community that was both derivative of past communal experiments and wholly new. In regarding the WELL's legacy, it most immediately appears to function in technical relation to what we now understand to be social networks - websites like Friendster, Myspace, Facebook where users create relationships with one another through text. The utopian thought that informed the WELL's creation and implementation distinguishes it from these social networks. People didn't gravitate towards the WELL solely as a social function, but as a means to discuss the problems facing a changing world. In particular, people sought refuge in the WELL as a means to overcome boundaries both physical and ideological that plagued them in their 'first lives', be it geographical location, political leaning, gender orientation, or otherwise.

Virtual worlds, online 3D spaces where users interacted with one another, were not far behind these text-based communities. LucasFilm's Habitat, launched in 1986, is of particular note. Habitat distinguished itself from previous online role-playing games (MUDs and MOOs) by abandoning text-based systems of interaction in favor of the avatar, a visual representation of self in an online space. Prior to Habitat, all social interactions in online spaces took the form of words - the advent of the avatar to these interactions (albeit at the time - and arguably still - quite crude) added an entirely new dimension to the landscape of virtual communities. In particular, the avatar gave greater attachment from individuals to their online selves. Habitat developers Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer posed a particularly provocative question to Habitat users: "is an Avatar an extension of a human being (thus entitled to be treated as you would treat a real person) or a Pac-Man-like critter destined to die a thousand deaths or something else entirely?"[C.20] The question grew out of a discussion of death within the virtual world - the programmers behind Habitat had chosen to make death a part of the game, eventually retaining central city locations as "safe zones" while the wilderness beyond city limits allowed of "thievery and gunplay."[C.20] The community was divided, with roughly half viewing killing in Habitat as murder that should be punished, half viewing it as part of the game (and the fun).

Clearly from the standpoint of digital utopianists, death was incongruent with their vision of a world that would escape the ills of global society. While violence raged outside of the city centers and with battles became an integral part of Habitat's gameplay, a Greek Orthodox Priest opened "The Order of the Holy Walnut", an in-Habitat Church whose disciples were forbidden to "carry weapons, steal, or participate in violence of any kind."[C.20] Though popular to an extent, these efforts to define and reclaim Habitat in the name of digital utopia were ultimately fruitless. It was undeniably a game first, virtual world second.

Since Habitat, the popularity of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) has grown exponentially, with worlds such as Ultima Online and Everquest dominating hard drive space throughout the late 1990s and the more recently conceived metaverses of World of Warcraft, Runescape, and Gaia Online attracting players from across the globe. While social structures exist in these virtual worlds, they still function primarily as games, offering users goals to be completed and challenges to be conquered. Very distinct social structures are created around the groupings that form therein, requiring similar, but distinct, literature and analytical approaches from those used in the analysis of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs).

From the outset, Second Life positioned itself both explicitly and implicitly in the same philosophical lineage as the WELL - fueled by visions of cyber-utopia. Cory Ondrejka, foudning CTO at Linden Lab, proclaimed with conviction his belief in the vision of digital utopia, stating that while "people are not yet free to experience the collapse of geography, to build communities, groups, and businesses independent of location", virtual worlds have the ability to "lead this transition" to of a "global village"[C.19/P.27]. Similarly, while all of Second Life's founders derived their knowledge of virtual worlds from computer games, they nonetheless envisioned a world that had at its core utopian thought. Phillip Rosedale, Linden Lab's primary creator, foresaw a "virtual Eden", invoking images he had seen of virtual landscapes at a 3-D graphics expo[C.1/P.24]. Ondrejka, while primarily interested in the concept of Second Life initially as a means to "reinvigorate game development", nonetheless categorized his vision as that of a "living breathing world."[C.1/P.25] Andrew Meadows, an original member of the software and technology team, saw the ability to formulate a "natural world that had bugs and flowers and trees that grew."[C.1/P.24] It wasn't until they accidentally discovered the power of user object creation - Second Life had, and still maintains, one of the most flexible and open building environments for a virtual world - that they realized the most profound aspect of the MUVE they created was that it was a world "for people, created by people."[C.1/P.30] Seen by Rosedale as akin to Burning Man - a temporary city constructed over 8 days in The Nevada desert, stepped with notions of communal development and openness - Second Life was meant to be a "huge playspace for making things [...] a wonderland of creative projection".[C.1/P.31]