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The View from a Wheelchair

December 18, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Australian Second Life resident, Seshat Czeret, provides her second guest post. Thanks Seshat!

seshat2sml

There is always a lot of talk about ‘accessibility’, so-called ‘making things usable for the disabled’. You also hear a lot about phrases like ‘discrimination’, ‘equal opportunity’ and ‘political correctness’. It can be difficult to work out what is actually needed to help a disabled person live a fulfilling and useful life, and what is excessive ‘correctness’. Hearing what life is like for a disabled person can help.

I’m disabled. I use Second Life extensively. This is my story.

In the atomic world, the fleshworld, I’m almost totally housebound. I can only do chores – or SL work – for a short time before I have to rest. I only have a few hours a day in which I’m functional, and even for those I’m not fully functional. I haven’t been since I was a teenager. Some days – even some weeks or months – I have even less, or am not functional at all.

When I do go out, I have to use a mobility scooter or a wheelchair. I can walk, but walking the length of a mall would tire me out to the point where I’d need several hours of sleep to recover. For various reasons – which would probably be boring – even with the assistance of the scooter or the wheelchair, going out is very stressful and leaves me tired. I have to plan outings carefully.

So I can’t do atomic world work. By the time I got to work, I’d be too weak to achieve anything. I’ve tried, over and over again, many times in the last two decades. I’ve done it, but only at the cost of aggravating my problems.

Fortunately for me, I live in the 21st Century. I can do work from home! I’ve done voluntary work for the Open Source community. I’ve done other sorts of online voluntary work. I’ve written articles, and twice written a book. Unfortunately, the pace of work expected of an author of books exceeds what I can do – the first time I wrote a book, I was more than a year recovering.

But in Second Life, I can be useful.

In Second Life, I teach. I only have to be focussed for an hour and a half or so at a time, which is a stretch of time I can manage. And I don’t have to leave my house, exhausting myself, to do so. I can teach in text, with student questions also in text, so my hearing problems don’t matter. Much of the typing is done in advance, so I don’t overstrain my arms and hands, and only have to type the personalisation of the class for the individual students I’m teaching that day.

In Second Life, I am an NCI helper. I sit and listen in on the NCI chat/questions group channel. When there’s a problem I can help with, I can choose to respond – or not! If I’m having a high pain day, I let others catch that question. If I’ve responded to too many questions and need a break, I let others catch that question. If I can answer, however, I will.

In Second Life, I run a business. I don’t have to be there all the time, I can set things up and then go collapse into my bed. I can create things that other people like, in the times when I am functional, and rest when I’m not. I can do the business management stuff when I’m capable of it, not to someone else’s timeframe.

Best of all, in Second Life, my body works. I can run, and dance, and fly, and ‘talk’, and ‘hear’. I can attend art shows, or watch people creating art in sandboxes.

In Second Life, I am a person and not a disability.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: , ,

A better system? Teaching healthcare virtually

December 12, 2008 by 3 Comments

A story from our sister site, Metaverse Health.

MyCaseSpace data image

Rather than assessing their students through a paper-based examination, or even by having real, live people come in to pretend to be patients, it is starting to become more common to hear of healthcare educators asking their students instead to use computer applications and tools featuring digitally-created patients.

There are a myriad decisions that need to be made surrounding patient care. Students need to be able to wield a large amount of technical data, be able to think well on the fly, and be able to make quick yet considered decisions as healthcare professionals. These digitally-created, or virtual, patients can assist in building these skills.

Though virtual patients look just like the avatars that represent actual people in virtual worlds, the virtual patients usually have either an artificial intelligence (AI) or a scripted backend behind them. As opposed to an AI, the scripted backend cannot make decisions itself – instead , it follows a decision tree that has already been set before the student engages with it.

Medicine

Source 1, Source 2

MyCaseSpace is a Web-based application which presents virtual patients to students at irregular intervals throughout the span of their course. Virtual patients may contact the student at any time of the day or night, through their computer, and request a clinical consult. The virtual patients use avatars to communicate visually with students; the speech of the virtual patients can be accessed in 13 different languages. These patients use a scripted backend for their interactions, the design of which was based on video-game decision trees.

The application can easily be updated and altered to include virtual family members of the virtual patient to make demands upon the students.

Critical thinking skills used to be tested by setting examination papers; some people believe that the current set of students, being more digitally aware, will respond better to a digital presentation. Others are of the opinion that modern students have an expectation that they will continue to receive paper exams, and may have trouble with digital resources.

Though it has not been proven that this method of assessment results in either better or poorer results for the students, the professors and tutors find the system to be most beneficial for them. The application collects, stores, and processes data generated by the students’ assessments, cutting down on time and tedium, and increasing accuracy, for the marking individual.

Nurses

Source

“Nurse Island” has been set up inside Second Life by the Glasgow Caledonian University. Apart from the virtual representation of the university, built so that prospective students can learn to find their way around campus, the Nursing Skills Laboratory has been recreated and populated with virtual patients. These patients can be controlled either by an AI or by a tutor, and use text to speech synthesis rather than recorded voices.

The conversations held between patients and students are recorded, so that students can be debriefed later by a tutor. This facility will open early next year.

Paramedics

Source 1, Source 2

This Second Life project represents a partnership between St George’s, University of London and Kingston University.

Paramedic students will work in teams of three or four, and will encounter emergency scenarios in Second Life in which they will need to treat a virtual patients or patients. They will need to perform such tasks as checking the patient’s pulse, dressing wounds and administering drugs. They may also need to be able to use equipment that would typically be found in an ambulance, such as oxygen masks and electrocardiograms (ECG). After assessing and treating the patient, they must load the patient into the ambulance and set a GPS device to take them to the hospital.

On reaching the hospital, students then handover a set of patient notes to their tutor via email.

Emily Conradi, e-Projects Manager, says: “Paramedic students spend a lot of time in work placements, which can be based anywhere in the country, so it can be hard for the students to meet face-to-face with each other and with their tutors.”

CPR and emergency first aid

Source

The Italian Resuscitation Council (IRC) headquarters in Second Life (to teleport there, click here) has been set up as a place that people can be trained and re-trained, whether they be instructors, medical professionals or laypeople.

The IRC training simulations for instructors and medical people would include simulations to improve and test teamwork, leadership and technical skills. The simulations would also impart knowledge concerning CPR and other emergency training procedures.

Some of the information directed at laypeople includes cardiac arrest prevention knowledge and basic life support information.

In conclusion

Effectiveness of learning is not the only reason to use a virtual world or virtual patients. If learning is not less effective than by using other methods, and there are other benefits to the virtual alternatives, they may still be well worthwhile.

Filed Under: Health

Avatar: representation, communication, experience

November 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The many faces of Feldspar

“Virtual Worlds Research: Consumer Behavior in Virtual Worlds” 
Vol. 1. No. 2  ISSN: 1941-8477  November 2008
Symbolic and Experiential Consumption of Body in Virtual Worlds: from (Dis)Embodiment to Symembodiment

Source

This experiment focused on the corporeal body (real, physical or atomic embodiment), and the virtual body (digital, non-corporeal embodiment), also called an avatar in some digital environments. Each embodiment can be for social and self-presentation as a part of communication, and as a project, for creating experiences by altering one’s appearance and living new lifestyles associated with that appearance.

Prior to this research being undertaken, there were two primary competing views regarding virtual embodiment:

  1. Disembodiment – the user is able to break away from their corporeal embodiment, into a virtual embodiment.
  2. Embodiment is essential, even in virtual worlds, to whatever degree it can be achieved.

This research team has concluded that the embodiment/disembodiment debate is non-resolvable and futile. Instead, they introduce the concept of symembodiment: that is, that an avatar is a symbolic embodiment but not a physical embodiment. There is always a partial degree of embodiment.

The body in modern, Western, society has more meaning placed on it than perhaps at any time in the past, because it is easier to modify the body, successfully and safely, than it has ever been. Body image – creating and maintaining a “perfect” look – is paramount. On the flip side, disease and disability are much harder to cope with in this modern age - because there are so many treatments available for common ailments now, anyone with a visible issue is seen not have care about their body image, or the social and moral implications of their perceived “choice”. Thus, while for some people the body can be seen as a “project”, to be worked on and altered, other people tend to view their bodies as hindrances – they have greater constraints on how much their bodies can be altered, and on the type of experiences they can have through their bodies.

The researchers contend that an avatar, as a body that is as much a representation of self as the corporeal body, can be an end that the user playfully engages in for its own sake – modifying the avatar becomes an experience in and of itself.

Their research questions included the following:

  1. How do consumers attach meanings to the digital self images they create?
  2. How are these images constructed and reconstructed?
  3. How and what do consumers experience through their virtual bodies?

Avatar: the body in the virtual world

The mind and previous bodily concepts of the user greatly influence the types of virtual bodies they inhabit. With virtual bodies, it is common to have at least two, if not many more, symbolic bodies.

Second Life

Second Life tends to support the use of multiple selves. Once the skill of avatar alteration is learnt, it becomes a very quick and simple process to change between virtual bodies. Second Life also supports using avatar alteration as a form of play or experience – avatars are very malleable, and have fewer constraints to alteration than our physical bodies.

Methodology

  1. The researchers entered Second Life as users.
  2. They fully participated in Second Life culture and conducted participant observations.
  3. They found participants by using their own personal networks.
  4. They conducted both online, in-world interviews and offline, atomic-world interviews.

Questions asked during interviews focused on the participants’ feelings and motives about their lives in Second Life, how they went about creating and recreating their avatars (virtual bodies), and what sort of experiences the participants had with their avatars.

Findings

The researchers felt that users were highly involved in Second Life due to the ability to alter and experience the alteration of the avatar, and due to the freedom afforded in such alterations compared to the corporeal form. They also noted that users create multiple avatars, or at least multiple, vastly differing looks for a single avatar, each of which is derived from a facet of the user’s own concept of self. I wonder to what extent each individual takes on a separate role to go with each representation – do they take on different morals and ethics? Perhaps, less drastically, it is more similar to our representations of ourselves that we use at work and at home – different dress, different speech /language.

In Second Life, a ‘null’ representation – one designed not to  draw attention, is just as apt to be interpreted by other users as are more interesting or daring representations. Any representation says something about you to other people.

Some people found there to be excitement associated with the experience of having different bodily features to those in the atomic world. I note that there can also be a sense of normalcy associated with the difference, particularly for those people whose atomic body does not fit their mental concept of self, or for those whose atomic body varies greatly from some desired, unreachable, state.

Discussion

Your representation of yourself in virtual worlds, your avatar, has a great impact on how you communicate with and convey meaning to others. However, the avatar is more than this. In symembodiment, the users playfully construct and engage with their avatars – the user experiences the avatar, and has experiences through it.

“The modern impulse of seeking an ideal life is waning, while the desire to experience multiple alternate lives that allow
extraction of different meanings from life waxes.”

Conclusion

The researchers believe that the virtual body, rather than just being on display for communication purposes, becomes an experience in and of itself.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds

The rise and rise of the Game Widow

November 13, 2008 by Leave a Comment

(From our sister site, Metaverse Health)

This article in the Canadian publication, the London Free Press, describes in detail a couple of case studies of gaming addicts. The case studies themselves paint a fairly standard picture of someone with a compulsion for intensive gaming, though some effort has been made to provide balanced coverage of the issue.

The premise of the article is the establishment of a support service for gaming addicts in London, Ontario – apparently the first such group in Canada. What caught my eye was that the wife of one of the addicts described in the article, Wendy Kays, has written a book called Game Widow. (we’ll hopefully be reviewing the book soon).

The term ‘game widow’ has been around for years and it’s increasingly resonating with the broader public. It further emphasises the need for more research in the area as well as a vigilance toward not typecasting all gamers as addicts. Terms like ‘game widow’ also accentuate the gender divide in some gaming genres. There are surely ‘game widowers’ out there but they’re likely to be in a distinct minority.

One final comment to the author of the article – online roleplaying did not begin with Everquest in 1999.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Second Life is my wheelchair.

September 19, 2008 by 8 Comments

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Taupo/171/58/35

There’s all sorts of talk about accessibility, particularly around making computers, the Internet, and online services like Second Life accessible to those who are differently abled. From the chaps in Japan, with their innovative solutions that allow folks with very minimal physical capabilities to use Second Life, to the Imprudence team and Jacek Antonelli – just one of a number of groups looking to improve the accessibility of Second Life clients. Then there’s accessibility specialists who look at Second Life from a legal view (current US law, Section 508 of the Disabilities Act), and thus investigate the content of Second Life. There’s so much focus on how it might be accomplished.

Then someone goes and, distressingly, asks, why? Why should should we put all this effort, money and man-hours into these projects? Surely it’s not worth all the expense?

Let’s examine some of the whys behind the accessibility push.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 17% of the U.S. population, aged 16 and over, lives with some form of disability.

– Kippie Friedkin, 11/09/2008

If the US is representative of much of the world with regards to its Census results, close to 1/5th of the world’s population lives with some form of disability. This equates roughly to a staggering 1.36 billion people across the globe. That’s a huge number of people, all of whom are already at some disadvantage due to their disabilities. They would be disadvantaged further if accommodations are not made for them. Every one of these people has likely experienced some form of discrimination, or one or all aspects of the terrible trio: loneliness, isolation and depression. Because of their disability, these are perhaps the people who stand to benefit the most from the social revolution occurring online, and yet as it stands, they are the ones with the least access to it.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/128/128/23

A wheelchair gives someone with limited mobility to walk, but otherwise functional in the real world, the ability to go out and do things and be a functional member of the community. Because of the nature of my disabilities, a wheelchair is insufficient. However, SL permits me to do things without leaving the protected environment of my home where I have an ergonomic setup that allows for my disabilities.

From my computer chair, I can teach, run a business, have an active social life, and be a functioning member of a community. Second Life is my wheelchair.

– Seshat Czeret, 18/09/2008

Seshat Czeret runs a successful clothing and furniture business in Second Life. She runs classes for the NCI, and is a respected member of their staff. She has several friends whom she is routinely in contact with, and many more people she communicates with regularly. She is an avid roleplayer. All these things would not be possible without access to her high-end computer and broadband connection which enable her to access Second Life.

In the physical world, Seshat suffers from a painful disability which leaves her mostly housebound. She is unable to work away from home, to leave the house for social visits, or to participate in her local community.

For Seshat, a virtual environment is a tool. It’s an extra accessory than allows her new, sometimes unexpected but often welcome, freedoms. It opens up her world. It’s a place where she can be an asset, not a liability.

In another sense, virtual environments are also a good pain management tool. Seshat is able to focus strongly on what she is doing, thereby putting some of her pain aside. If she can be said to “escape” into Second Life, it is not in the sense of “escape into fantasy”, but rather in the sense of “escape from persecution.” It is just the same as focusing on walking, or reading, or gardening, thereby creating a meditative state through focus on an activity.

THE WILDE COLLECTIVE ON CRIMES AND INJUSTICES– MORE THAN OUR SHARE

[“Written by all the members of wilde, but namelessly for their protection and greater transparency”]

most of us, if not all of us, have had things stolen from us, because we were disabled

many of us, if not all of us, have been slapped or abused physically, and several times

all of us have been verbally abused– a lot! which hurts by the way!!

we’ve had our money taken from us

perhaps the greatest pain when our dignity has been taken, stolen.

our humanity, feelings, kicked around and abused

control. people take control. they take control of our things, our decisions. they force their will and preferences upon us. no we cant buy that. no we cant eat that. no we have to watch this. no i dont have time now. no you cant go anywhere. no you will be unable to move for awhile. no…

– wilde Cunningham, 05/12/2004

“The nine souls of wilde Cunningham”, a group of nine adults with cerebral palsy, wrote the piece above in 2004.

The take-away lesson from this piece is that people with disabilities often have control, in every facet of life, taken away from them. Accessibility options are just a small way in which the world can return that control. The option to have new experiences, travel outside your room or residence, socialize with people you wouldn’t usually get to meet, have a job or run a business – suddenly more of these become available to people to whom it matters most poignantly.

In Second Life they are on a equal setting and we don’t see the handicaps.

– Toy LaFollett

Virtual environments which do not show the user’s face nor use voice put more people on an equal footing. What harm is there in ignoring, in failing to display one’s disabilities, when common reactions are those of pity or of prejudice – both of which have a tendency to lead to a lack of control and shame for the disabled individual?

Being in Second Life is how I imagine an innocent man who had been locked up wrongly feels when he is finally set free. In Second Life I get to call the shots.

– John S.

Additional thanks go to Shelley Schlender, for her thought-provoking article.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Healthcare giants: have clue, will build.

September 5, 2008 by 1 Comment

Whyville Bioplex

When it comes to the use of virtual environments, the healthcare industry is no less prone to fall into marketing pits of doom than any other industry. Static data, presented in a slap-dash fashion like posters on a wall. Huge, unused buildings that serve no particular purpose, and the occasional video. This seems to be the standard fare presented by companies and organisations coming into virtual environments who are not sensible about use of the medium. Often, these folk would have been better served by a well-organised Web page than the mish-mash they present within virtual environments. Indeed, their attempts are distinctly reminiscent of the early days of the Web, before people got a handle on that medium.

It’s not all bad, however. A couple of companies and organisations have produced useful and significant services that are appropriate for virtual environments. They have clearly thought about how best to discharge the services they already provide to demographics containing the folks they previously had a great deal of trouble reaching. People who use virtual environments, and who:

a) are unable or unwilling to leave their homes to obtain health information or care;
b) suffer from chronic illnesses that require some maintenance by the patient that can be bolstered by health information or care delivered online;
c) are young, not requiring specific healthcare, but can benefit from information delivery.

One of the best efforts open to the public eye is Palomar West hospital, a venture by Cisco, Palomar Pomerado Health, and metaverse developers Millions-of-us. The Second Life version of the hospital, built before the real version, is an exact model of what you can expect to see in San Diego in 2011, to the extent that several rooms are fully kitted-out with the sort of equipment that will fill the real thing. The Second Life exhibit is quite interactive, and provides an excellent idea of how things might operate in reality. Cisco Systems will power the real hospital. A central, internal network will be created to support the operation of the hospital, from patient locations via RFID tags, to room temperature and lighting via bedside screens, to the robotic technology that enables surgeons to operate remotely and automated systems for diagnostic work. Incidently, when we wandered past the site to take a closer look, a research study was being conducted. It’s good to know that this virtual environment replica is useful not only for future patients, and public healthcare at that level of education, but also for medical and other professionals.

Another ongoing project that has proved to be successful is one put on by the CDC in Whyville. Whyville is a virtual scientific learning environment for kids aged 8 to 15 years old. During the influenza season in the real world, Whyvillians are also placed at risk of developing the “Why-flu”, which causes sneezing and red spots on the avatar’s face. Not only were kids given the chance to have their avatar inoculated prior to the Why-flu season beginning, during the season those who caught the flu had a chance to buy remedies from the pharmacy, which were time-limited, and which came at a cost. During the second round of the project in 2007-2008, Whyvillians were encouraged to invite their grandparents to come and be virtually inoculated also. Thus information was disseminated across several generations online, and no doubt further than that offline, to other family members, and from there into the wider population.

This year the CDC has teamed up with CIGNA to produce a healthcare island in Second Life.

“About 90% of what we’re doing with chronic disease management involves behavior change. We could do more for our patients who have diabetes, weight problems or hypertension by helping them relieve their stress and achieve better mental health.” This is what they hope to cover in the virtual environment.

We are yet to experience the island for ourselves, however given the success of the Whyville project, it seems that the CDC have an excellent idea of what it takes to sell healthcare information to the younger generation; it will be interesting to see what tack they take for older folk. Most people like to take their medicinal information with a spoonful of sugar – experience will tell whether games will be the sweetener required, or whether talks and general social interaction are the preferential nectar.

Another site of note: the Second Health hospital or Polyclinic, Second Health London in Second Life. In a similar fashion to the West Palomar site (though in less detail), the Polyclinic displays a 3D representation as it might exist in real life. The establishment can be toured, though perhaps the machinima made at the site in Second Life, with accompanying information, is more enlightening. Though an entire medical campus has been built, with signs denoting the areas in which GPs and specialists will see patients, the acute care clinic and diagnostic facilities, none of the detail of equipment or functioning of the clinic has been created.

Yet another fantastic use of virtual environments is exemplified by the folk over at Play2Train. A town and two hospitals have been fitted out to enable “Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), Simple Triage Rapid Transportation (START), Risk Communication and Incident Command System (ICS) Training”.”Play2Train provides opportunities for training through interactive role playing.”

For a quick round up of other nifty virtual doings in healthcare, visit this link.

There is a vast diversity of healthcare information that needs to be delivered, both to professionals and to the general public. Virtual environments may only slowly be coming into their own in this realm, however, there is hope for them yet.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

Introducing: Metaverse Health

July 29, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I’m really pleased to introduce a new sister site to The Metaverse Journal: Metaverse Health. It’s a completed site now but expect further enhancements in coming weeks.

In the time we’ve been covering virtual worlds, health is one of the key areas that pops up time and time again as both a key opportunity and pivotal challenge. Whether it be the power of thought-controlled avatars for those with profound physical disabilities, the spectre of virtual world addiction or sex education for teenagers, there’s no shortage of stories to bring you.

As always, comments and feedback welcome. Also, if health and virtual worlds is a passion and you’d like to write about it, contact us to discuss your ideas further.

Filed Under: Australian News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With:

What looks like addiction, but is not – Virtual Addiction, Part 3

July 22, 2008 by 1 Comment

I spend hours with my computer. It is my favorite tool. I spend time in and out of virtual worlds; I spend time on and off the Internet, surfing with my browser. I communicate, I work, I play. From the sheer amount of time spent with my machine during the day, according to some measures, it would be correct to say that I am addicted to the behaviour of using my computer. I do not, however, consider this to be an addiction.

Several people within my experience also spend a great deal of time with their computers. Interestingly, the particular people I am thinking of were also at one time thought to be drug addicts. Each of these people suffers from either a physical pain disorder, or from a chemical mental disorder. The drugs they take assist their functioning, above and beyond the side effects they cause. I do not consider any of these people to be addicts, either, with regards to drug use or computer use.

Smoking - one of the legal addictions.

Why is this not addiction?

The most important signs of addiction, and indeed the ones that cry out for treatment, are loss of control regarding the addiction and destructive behaviors of and surrounding the addiction. Neither I nor my friends exhibit these signs in our computer usage nor drug usage; therefore, this behavior is not an addiction, by definition.

Why does it look like addiction?

One of the primary signs attributed to addictions of computer usage is time spent engaging in the behavior. This sign may help with the diagnosis of an addiction, but alone cannot be used to make the diagnosis.

Consider how many hours a day the average person spends at work. Perhaps eight hours all up, divided into an hour for lunch, a couple of hours for meetings and other communications, and the rest for the actual work they do. Then consider that person gets home (two hours for travel), eats (two hours for eating at home), and watches TV or reads (four hours). This accounts for sixteen hours of the day, roughly.

Imagine, then, if all of this could be accomplished from their computer at home. Suddenly, rather than seeing a person spending sixteen hours a day in mindless clicking, there is someone working, communicating, gathering news and information and finding entertainment using the same tool.

Another sign often taken alone and out of context is a lack of face-to-face communication on behalf of a person who uses computers.

There are many different scenarios in which face-to-face communication is not applicable, but for example, consider a person with a physical disability in which face-to-face communication is difficult to achieve. For someone with limited mobility or large amounts of pain, getting out of the house may range from impractical to impossible. Consider sufferers of social anxieties, or autistic folk, who are barely able to communicate face-to-face, but whom are liberated by the digital space.

Is quality of life being gained or lost?

Where there is a gain in quality of life which exceeds the downsides to the behavior, there is unlikely to be an addictive problem. With drugs for pain relief, it has been found that it’s very rare for folks who require the drug for pain relief to exhibit loss of control or destructive behaviors concerning the drug, even though they have a physical dependence on it. There may be withdrawal symptoms and side effects, but overall the quality of life increase for these folks. Being able to take care of themselves, their homes, their families, and having enjoyment in life far outweighs the problems in most cases.

Technology is enabling.

Can you imagine telling someone with no legs to forsake their wheelchair? How about someone with a pain disorder? Are you going to tell people with crippling mental disorders that they are not allowed to take drugs to normalize and enable them? Are you going to tell deaf people they can’t use Teletype in place of the telephone?

Each of these technological advances were radical in their time; some of them were seen as being destructive, to society or to the individual. It’s hard to imagine any of these people being denied their enabling technologies in today’s first world society (one hopes). I hope to live in a future where my enabling computer habits are accepted.

What harm is being done, to whom, if I take care of myself, my family, my house, my dog, my finances and my business, while still spending many hours a day at my desk at home?

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

Second Life – Relay for Life 2008

July 20, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Second Life’s Relay for Life is well underway – it’s hard to believe it’s been a year since the last one.

Check the schedule and get involved if you can.

Filed Under: General News, Health, Virtual Worlds Tagged With: ,

On Being a Virtual World Whore – Virtual Addiction, Part 2

July 14, 2008 by Leave a Comment

There’s been a great deal of debate of whether “Internet Addiction” and its close cousin, “Virtual World Addiction”, should be classified as disorders separate from other behavioral addictions. Psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg reputedly borrowed the criteria for substance use and impulse-control disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), and jokingly created the criteria for Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) way back in 1995. Since then the debate has raged wildly – can these two addictions be meaningfully separated out and classified, or is there little real reason for doing so?

Smoking - one of the legal addictions.

Internet and Virtual World Addiction: what are the specifics?

Internet addiction, and virtual world addiction (by association), seems to revolve around five basic sub-types: gambling, sexual preoccupation, messaging and/or chatting, online gaming and information gathering.

None of these are new concepts. As previously discussed, the Internet and the virtual world are mediums. The problem is with the individual’s pathological need to carry out the activity, not with the medium that provides the means for that activity.  Each of the five sub-types mentioned can be performed using other mediums and indeed have been for some time.

Nonetheless, there is a definite appeal to engaging in these activities online. The internet and virtual worlds provide high levels of convenience. It is much easier and quicker to gamble from home, using electronic funds, than to be physically present or to accomplish the task over the phone. If you are looking to be secretive about your behavior, it’s easiest to hide your actions online – no need to hide physical evidence like books or magazines.

Still, this does not constitute sufficient reason to separate out these addictions from other behavioural issues.

What are the withdrawal symptoms of Internet and Virtual World Addiction?

Symptoms include: loneliness, boredom, anger, irritability, frustration, emotional “vacancy” or numbness, disconnectedness, loss, moodiness, depression and restlessness. Interestingly, these symptoms sound suspiciously like those suffered by people cut off from the rest of society. Internet users asked to give up their internet usage reported that they felt “left out of the loop” – an understandable reaction given how many people interact with each other online rather than face-to-face or over the phone.

Of course, these symptoms are not restricted to folks cut off from society – these apply to other behavioural addictions. Internet and Virtual World addictions do not have symptom lists that specifically separate them from other behavioral addictions.

What are the consequences of being addicted to the Internet and Virtual Worlds?

Having an addiction implies that one relationship or activity has become all-important, other relationship or activities are ignored or given a minimum amount of attention. As with any other addiction, this often includes a reduction in time spent at work (or complete absence), resulting in loss of employment, financial loss and hardship and less time spent maintaining or creating relationships. This leads to existing relationships breaking down, new relationships not created through other mediums, a more secretive approach to relationships (where the true nature of the addiction is hidden from other parties) and reducing relationship quality, Other obligations and chores are neglected, sometimes to the extent that a health risk exists.

For humans as social and physical animals, the most significant of these consequences after health health concrens, is the loss of close relationships with other people, particularly family relationships. Humans require some amount of physical contact to remain healthy – the portion of a relationship that can be experienced online is no less real when experienced over a distance instead of face-to-face. Nonetheless, online relationships will never be able to fully replace relationships where physical contact is possible.

Who gets addicted to the Internet, or to Virtual Worlds?

Intriguingly, those people who suffer from this addiction may have suffered from symptoms very similar to the symptoms for this affliction prior to becoming addicted: depression, guilt, and anxiety. There are often other symptoms (dysphoric mood, feelings of helplessness, interpersonal distress, low self-esteem) and other issues (abandonment, shame, fear) that presage this type of addiction. It’s surprising how common it is for people with these underlying conditions to become addicts; up to 86% of study subjects also exhibit other diagnosable mental health disorders.

Two of the factors that are not necessarily indicators for who will become addicted are age and social capacity, even though stereotypically socially awkward or inept youths are seen as the main sufferers. Daniel Loton of the Victoria University in Australia has shown that what he terms “problem play” (as relates to gaming in virtual worlds) is not restricted to those people who have little capacity for socialization. Low self-esteem is however a good predictor of whether someone will become an addict, according to the study.

Treatment of addiction in behavioural cases?

A diagnosis is most useful where it can be used to treat an affliction. Most behavioral addictions respond well to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Indeed, internet and virtual world addiction cases reportedly respond well to CBT. Thus, there would seem to be little reason to separate out internet and virtual world addiction solely on the basis of needing a treatment specific to the new diagnosis.

In conclusion, there seems to be no need for the distinct and separate classifications of internet and virtual world addiction. These terms merely clump together several different behavioural addictions with the same delivery method. It’s like saying that snorters and injectors of an addictive drug should get a different diagnosis. Even if there are cases where the presentation, withdrawal symptoms or consequences are different, the therapy used to treat the different cases remains the same. Unnecessarily differentiating labels seems to do no more than confuse more than they contribute.

In the third and final article of this series, we will look at behaviour that seems like addictive behavior, but isn’t all that it seems to be on the surface.

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