thanks for the opportunity to clarify, and i guess add to my point: (context: i was distinguishing between puppets and avatars and I said puppets don't interact with other puppets...) it occurs to me that technically, of course, this is not true, puppets interact with other puppets - i'm imagining a puppet show :). however, they do so strictly as vehicles of the puppeteers' intentions, or as vehicles of the puppeteers and/or audience's symbolic interpretations of those (on stage) interactions. avatar-to-avatar interaction in SL is distinct from a puppet show. here i would want to make a distinction between avatar use in SL, compared to avatar use in gaming or in disneyfied kids websites SL avatar interaction is not like a puppet show because it is not a 'show' in the sense of a definite dramatic performance with a beginning, middle, and ending. One avatar has to respond to the other avatar according to the way the first avatar's human user imagines is the attitude, not of the second avatar's human user, but of the second avatar, since there is no way to check the attitudes of the human user without disrupting the immersive quality of the virtual world. And adding to the difference from human-to-human interaction in RL, in SL avatars, of course, compared to humans have a different repertoire of possible movements and expressions with different in-built limitations. So the human user of an avatar has to interpret the meaning of the other avatar's actions without being able to check the attitudes of the human user (or at least with an in-built discouragement in the world from doing so and a drastically-reduced ability to do so) in a context that is qualitatively different than a human context. And all of this takes place in an environment in which it is quite possible for an avatar to be harmed by another avatar (in the sense of the abilities of one avatar being somehow impaired by that of another, quite independently of the relative states of the human users.) I would say then, ya, there is something very different about the context of interaction in SL. If we agree that one avatar can harm another avatar, and researchers can only research as avatars, then there is indeed a need for a new kind of ethics protocol for research in SL. Its a bit of a catch-22 problem to gain research permissions, because we researchers would first have to develop the theory and practice of SL research for the ethics to become clear, but we need the ethics permissions to get started on the research. I would be interested to know what anyone including those with SL research experience think about this... ______________________________ Dr. David Toews, PhD Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology University of Windsor, Canada If you do not keep the multiplicity of language-games in view you will perhaps be inclined to ask questions like: "What is a question?" - Wittgenstein William Bain <willronb@yahoo.com> Sent by: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org 03/10/08 04:14 AM Please respond to air-l@listserv.aoir.org To air-l@listserv.aoir.org cc Subject [Air-L] avatar research ethics David Toews wrote "however, puppets don't interact with other puppets" - and I ask: what about games like Shame Station? what about experiments like the "virtual Reprise of the Stanley Miligram Obedience Experiments"? But my real question is what are avatars, does definition depend on context - maybe that was clear enough already :-) Best wishes, Will William Bain PhD Student Comparative Literature Department of Spanish Philology Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/