What Is the <s>Matrix</s> Real World?

We're now starting the second keynote session with Sara Kiesler from Carnegie Mellon University. Her topic is the question of 'given ubiquity, what is the real world?' She starts out by discussing the topic of ubiquity in itself - this could mean ubiquity of access across society (and then access to what types of services - dial-up, broadband; email, Web, etc.?) or personal ubiquity (use of the Net in virtually aspects of everyday life, for a wide variety of purposes; in fact, people now equate 'computer use' with 'Internet use'). Sara's hypothesis, then, is that the online world is so intertwined with the real world that we cannot any more study the Internet as a unique entity. Evidence for such blurred boundaries are for example online communities, online communication, online shopping, and online anonymity. In terms of online communities, we've now move past Clifford Stoll's caveat that 'real communities are local; the others are metaphor': on- and offline communities are now deeply connected with one another, and online communities are now very tangible. (Examples for this include the Howard Dean fund-raising campaign in the U.S. election primaries, the use of the Net to organise street demonstrations and other events, and other activist uses like MoveOn.org as well as the calls to increase regulation of such online activist groups.) Many, perhaps most, online communities have a real world concomitant, and online and 'real' are no longer separate worlds. Additionally, of course, there are multitudes of communities of practice and communities of interest - from bridal self-help group TheKnot.com to Military.com to the Lego Users Group Network (LUGNET). As for online communication: this is increasingly interleaved with other forms of communication, too (face-to-face, phone, messaging), while communicating with strangers, and in online groups is far less common. Thus, Internet communication is not separate from the real world. The boundary is also blurring in online commerce - businesses are increasingly using the Internet for both b2b and b2c communication as well as internal company organisation; additionally, since the dot.com collapse popular sites also increasingly have a brick-and-mortar concomitant. Customers, too, mix online and real-world shopping: in all the areas of finding information, searching catalogues, examining products, getting service, and finally purchasing goods. Sara points to a study by a consulting group of 'the multichannel consumer'. Finally, online anonymity is disappearing. Technology is becoming increasingly intrusive into anonymity because through Google and other services plenty of obscure information is immediately available to searchers, and because the increasing amount of available memory and storage has slowed the disappearance of old information; additionally, digital video, photos, and Internet telephony has made it much more difficult to hide behind assumed personas since these are increasingly easy to debunk. Online social information is also available from government and NGO Websites and other sources, and finally there is creeping regulation encroaching on anonymity, enabling employer and government monitoring (Sara references an old quote from Scott McNealy from Sun Microsystems, saying 'get over it - you have zero privacy anyway'). Having said all of this, then, what is the future of Internet research? Sara suggests that the old way of Internet research is to compare online and real-world engagement, studying the nature of emerging forms and the differences in online and real-world behaviours. (Hmm, is this an oversimplification of the kind of research that's really going on?) Instead, however, today it is necessary to see online and real-world in tandem; to study the whole set of behavioural practices of individuals, groups, and communities rather than only the subset of their actions that pertains to online. A 'pure play' online world still remains in existence for some time at least, though, and in such interactions certain types of microcontributions can be seen (social control, lurking, encouragement, external promotion, infrastructure, and active participation), which are driven by certain needs and wants (an owner role, liking interaction, altruism, a desire for visibility). Where online vs. real-world studies still persist, another question emerges: do the results of such studies translate to Eastern, collectivist cultural settings from their Western, individualistic origins? Ultimately, then: the Internet is becoming ubiquitous, but ubiquity does not equate to equality. Furthermore, the systems are continuing to evolve, and this needs to be taken into account. Sara calls for a stronger theoretical direction of research, for example in the establishment of criteria which drive good levels of public engagement. What makes projects like Linux successful? We need theory to define what is an inherently interdisciplinary field (paradigms define fields), to attain academic respectability, to create generalisable principles, and ultimately to design a better Internet.