I’m interested in the claim that the networks (and so, the ideas) of textual venues are going to stay the same as the the networks of voice venues. It’s possible, there’s a large overlap between oral and textual conversation, but there are also divergences, and I don’t know if it’s clear yet whether those will grow over time or not. Voice dialog can traverse topics that’re really frustrating and aversive in text. And I find that the people I enjoy hanging out with in VR are a bit different from the ones I enjoy hanging out with in text. And very different in terms of who I’d introduce to which communities. The social structures haven’t had time to diverge yet and that most of us are most oriented in text and don’t even know the merits of voice and how to use them. But yeah, I think it’s pretty likely that text and voice systems are never going to come far apart. And I’m planning on trying to hold them together, because I think text (or at least, the text venues that are coming) is generally more wholesome than voice and voice could get really bad if it splits off.
The claim that people aren’t going to change… I don’t think that’s true. VR makes it easy to contact and immerse oneself in transformative communities. Oddly… I have experienced doing something like that in a textual online community (we were really great at making people feel like they were now a different kind of person, part of a different social network, on a different path), but I think VR will tend to make that a lot more intense, because there was a limit to how socially satisfying text relationships can be, and with VR that limit kind of isn’t there.
I’m interested in the claim that the networks (and so, the ideas) of textual venues are going to stay the same as the the networks of voice venues. It’s possible, there’s a large overlap between oral and textual conversation, but there are also divergences, and I don’t know if it’s clear yet whether those will grow over time or not.
Voice dialog can traverse topics that’re really frustrating and aversive in text. And I find that the people I enjoy hanging out with in VR are a bit different from the ones I enjoy hanging out with in text. And very different in terms of who I’d introduce to which communities. The social structures haven’t had time to diverge yet and that most of us are most oriented in text and don’t even know the merits of voice and how to use them.
But yeah, I think it’s pretty likely that text and voice systems are never going to come far apart. And I’m planning on trying to hold them together, because I think text (or at least, the text venues that are coming) is generally more wholesome than voice and voice could get really bad if it splits off.
The claim that people aren’t going to change… I don’t think that’s true. VR makes it easy to contact and immerse oneself in transformative communities. Oddly… I have experienced doing something like that in a textual online community (we were really great at making people feel like they were now a different kind of person, part of a different social network, on a different path), but I think VR will tend to make that a lot more intense, because there was a limit to how socially satisfying text relationships can be, and with VR that limit kind of isn’t there.