MBA Blog, R. Meima, August 17, 2007

Is Sustainable Growth a Real-World Possibility? Or only Virtually Possible?
The Rise of Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse

At a recent meeting of the Windham Environmental Coalition (a grassroots group here in Windham County, Vermont), I held a talk about land use, economic development, and sustainability. A big-picture question that came up was whether it was possible at all for our society to achieve ecological sustainability without doing away with private ownership of capital and free markets. Echoing the positions of Herman Daly and Paul Ehrlich back in the 1970s, it was suggested that a fundamental premise of the modern mixed market economy is endless growth, whereas sustainability will require a steady-state economy. This idea was popular in sustainability circles at that time; Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975) had a “stable-state” economy.

Herman Daly liked to describe the human economy as an expanding cube within a sphere (representing the biosphere) that will eventually puncture the sphere with its eight corners as it grows, gradually expropriating a larger and larger share of living nature for human food, fuel, shelter, space, etc. His point was that the cube would destroy the integrity of the sphere well before it had completely filled the sphere’s space. We see enormous human expropriation of the biosphere today: of the world’s photosynthetic production, of the seas’ fish, of wetlands and forests, of fresh water, of the atmosphere as a place to store waste, and so on. Is Daly’s image accurate? It appears to be. And is our economy – a linchpin of democracy as we know it – fundamentally reliant on material growth? If so, it would seem that we will be forced to either give up the market economy or devise ways for material growth to happen with greater and greater value borne by each unit of material weight or volume – i.e., a revolution in what has been called “eco-efficiency”.

There’s growth in quality as well as quantity, I replied to the above question. What has the history of Gaia been but a continual unfolding of increasing complexity? The biosphere certainly has grown over several billion years as the quantity of biomass on land has increased, and as soil has accumulated, but how do we measure elaboration of complexity relative to mere mass? There are measures of complexity – such as entropy, information density, and logical depth. Can most growth ultimately occur in realms where neither the logic of the market economy nor the integrity of the biosphere are violated, while material and energy growth slows and reverses to achieve a steady state?

“That reminds me,” said one of those present at the WEC meeting, “of how there are people out there now buying and selling the latest ring tones for their cell phones, and that’s not material…”

I was thinking along similar lines … Here’s why.

There’s a place where the population has grown by more than two-thirds in the past three months, where vast cities and landscapes are in a state of explosive development, and where commerce, social networking, entertainment, education, and much more are rapidly evolving in there variety and creativity. Where might this be? In what IBM calls the “Metaverse” (the term coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash) – the dramatically expanding world of immersive online 3-D multi-user virtual environments – and specifically in a “place” called Second Life.

Launched by San Francisco-based Linden Labs in 2003, Second Life is undergoing growth and elaboration at the moment that puts it in a different category from its Metaverse companions such as World of Warcraft, There, Anarchy Online, Shadowlands, Entropia Universe, and The Sims. What they all share is the ability for humans to interact through avatars they create, in richly detailed three-dimensional graphic worlds without the limitations of “RL” (real life). Avatars fly, teleport across large distances, chat, send instant messages, assume all sorts of appearances, acquire and use objects like clothing, weapons, and vehicles, and do many other things, guided by the mice and keyboards of their human counterparts, who could be sitting anywhere on the face of the planet as long as they have reasonably fast and reliable Internet service.

Where Second Life has transcended the established MMORPG (“massively multi-user online role-playing game) model is that, unlike the rest, it is not one game, and the scenery, structures, objects, and animations (i.e., program scripts) in its virtual world are freely created by users with a toolbox of means available to all. In the other virtual worlds, all this is established by the company behind the MMORPG and taken as given by users, and all users are role-players in some grand drama (e.g., in Entropia one is a settler on a planet called “Calypso”).

As a result, laid out like a vast grid, Second Life has become a complete world in a more accurate sense, containing activities ranging from gambling casinos to night clubs to college courses to political rallies to local self-governance to real-estate development to art exhibitions, live concerts, and many fantasy/sci-fi role-plays within its 12,000-plus quadrants (or “islands”). When I first became aware of Second Life in May of this year, there were around 5.5 million user accounts (a larger number than the number of unique users). As of the moment I write this sentence, there are 8,924,587. There are 42,029 users logged on. They are located in around 100 countries; two-thirds are outside the US; men and women roughly account for equal numbers of users. And during the past 24 hours, $1.16 million real US dollars traded hands in the economy of Second Life.

How is this relevant in the context of sustainability? In simple terms, the Metaverse offers ways in which to construct human environments (classrooms, malls, public parks, clubs, etc.) with practically no use of energy or materials; no need for heating or lighting; and the ability to travel to and from them almost instantly with little expenditure of energy. This is of particular interest for distance education. Moreover, the Metaverse offers the potential for nearly endless virtual materialism without actual material consumption.

It was with such ideas in mind that our Marlboro College Graduate Center acquired an island in Second Life this past June. We plan to test and evaluate the possibilities of this medium over the coming year. The island, named (not surprisingly) “Marlboro Grad Center,” sits alone in its own region of Second Life’s encircling ocean and has been the scene of a number of meetings and a virtual open house to date.

Is the Internet and the virtual worlds it’s spawning sustainable? From an environmental standpoint, as it evolves toward “Web 2.0,” can the Internet operate at greater and greater energy efficiencies AND expand to capture and supplant energy- and material-intensive activities in RL? Or will it remain an exotic artifact atop the layers and layers of clumsier, wasteful practices and technologies from whence its sophisticated plastic, metal, and glass components come, feeding off of an unsustainable energy grid?

And what of the human dimensions of the Metaverse? Will an enlightened humanity embrace activity in virtual worlds as it learns to become an ever-better steward of our ecological and social heritage? Or will virtual worlds primarily foster escapism, further alienation from wild nature and our bodies, and the addicting excitement of adrenaline- and endorphin-generating pursuits we already know well from computer gaming, online gambling, and cybersex?

In future postings to this blog, these are some of the questions I will revisit and attempt to shed light on. But one thing is clear: barring a technological Dark Age, the Metaverse is here to stay, and new adherents are flocking to it every day. The Marlboro Grad Center has taken the plunge.