Liveblogging MetaverseU: Beth Coleman and Parvati Dev with Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs

Beth Coleman is a professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Her main interest, at least today, is in ubiquitous computing with augmented reality. Many of the solutions are already here; all we have to do is look for them. Coleman takes us through the examples. Parvati Dev, after leading the Stanford Research Lab, has recently founded Innovation in Learning. LeRoy Heinrichs, still at Stanford, has worked additionally with virtual training in medicine. Together they moved the discussion in a life-and-death direction.

Halting State: Ubiquitous Computing and Augmented Reality [I missed a part of the title, but I think that's right.]

Looking at the near future of mixed-media game worlds in the near future, a lot of the options are already here, and Coleman is a proponent of looking even further for making invisible information visible.

Statement 1: “Augmented reality is related to issues of interoperability,” said Coleman. We’re already used to additional interfaces like mobiles, PCs, and TVs. “Even if we don’t realize it yet, we’re already clamoring for more portals that connect our interactions in real time.”

We got a shout out for recently highlighting Second Life running on the iPhone. [personal note: there’s plenty more examples in this direction out there as well.] Coleman’s partial point is that we don’t have to wait for the industry to solve our problems.

Statement 2: Augmented reality and mirror worlds affect the real world. It’s somewhat of a  given, admits Coleman,  but she points to a news story this week of Google being sued after users took its virtual Google Maps overlayed over reality to show that an Israeli town was (possibly) built on top of an older Arab city.

Likewise, the WaPo has pointed to terrorist training camps in Second Life. That’s old news in fiction. Coleman also showed off a YouTube video [Angry Teacher] of a teacher blowing up at his students.  In the background, you can hear students already giggling over the idea of posting it on YouTube.

“It’s pure theatre, but it’s a different kind of theatre than we’ve had before because of the size of the camera and the illicit nature,” said Coleman. “Some might not say it’s a mirror world or augmented reality, but we have a changing in agency and more.”

Transporting avatars doesn’t require interoperability, said Coleman. Cosplay is already there.  Sticker art, recreation of virtual items, and more show that users are already doing what they want.

“Virtual worlds on desktops are the last bastion of tethered computing,” said Coleman. “Those who are born mobile, stay mobile.”

They remain a niche because the design is still “self-regarding. We’ve got 10 million narcissist worlds blooming.”

While Raph Koster has argued that users don’t have a demand for interoperability, Coleman argues that it’s already there. There’s the ROA: Jerry Paffendorf’s term for Return on Awesome. 

“As you continue to develop your platforms, believe in crowd sourcing and crowd wisdom at least to some degree,” Coleman said. “And whatever degree it is, stick to it. Don’t change things around.”

Avatars and virtual worlds need to act like the rest of our information, from contacts and address books to YouTube videos on our phones, PCs, and TVs.

Works by Sander Veenhof, Alan Wong, and others show off the possibilities of fun with mixed reality.

"The bottom line is that this isn't even niche use," said Coleman. "It's the micro of micro users, but since we're dealing with micro-economies, why not pay attention?"

Learning Medicine at Virtual Stanford

The classical physician learned through hard experience and practice how to judge individual conditions. Now they lead teams, work with the best technology available, and cooperate with the patient.

They no longer need to learn lists of information, said Dev, as much as how to interact and prepare for lifelong learning. One way that Dev is looking at is the use of Mirror Worlds and Augmented Reality.

She’s created a mirror world based on real hospitals, gurneys, and, for things that are important, but less common, contamination tents for dealing with dirty bombs. All of that has gone in to Virtual Stanford based on Forterra’s OLIVE platform.

“The hallways are wide because we can’t navigate virtually as well and the surgeons all comment how clean it is,” said Dev. “But we have patients that are real in the sense that something is wrong with them and if you don’t do something with them they will die or get very, very sick.”

Heinrichs turned to look at the difference in training. Doctors use real-life training with people who “play” sick, but the virtual world patients can actually be sick and even die.

“That creates a new level of stress for the doctor,” he said.

There’s a whole new model as well. The patient can  have a roleplayer behind them creating a fully interactive experience. The experience is built on text, graphics, and animation.

“The person behind the scene knows that when vital signs get to a certain point, they start having seizures,” he said. “When they hear the physician use the key drugs, they stop.”

Heinrichs then walked through the model of different states in a flow chart requiring different actions at each step of the way. Along the way, the software measures proficiency based on the steps taken and the time spent on them.

With a more crowded ER, different patients can be ranked according to the severity of their injuries and doctors’ diagnoses scored based on who they spend time with. If a patient can’t be saved, they must move on to another.

Heinrichs only showed off one case, but he displayed a much longer list of cases that are integrated into the training.

After an exercise, one team failed to resuscitate a patient and fell behind when they could be taking care of another patient. The second team learned from the mistake and proceeded more efficiently.

“This is triage,” said Heinrichs. “It’s something doctors just don’t get to practice.”

“We’ve run this with teams of surgeons and they forget that this is play,” said Dev. “We have four people around a bed, and though they all may be sitting in one room with their headsets, if they’re not on the same team, they may not even hear the person next to them. It’s very, very engaging.”

The first virtual world the group did was done with Adobe’s Atmosphere with a very simple linear menu. They compared the performance of learners who worked with a mannequin (“the gold standard of how you teach in a simulation”) and those that worked with the simulation.

Compared to a pretest before 4 trials and lessons, the simulation team improved at the same level as with the mannequin. “We were very surprised,” said Dev. “I have to say that the cases we used were very simple and that we were teaching them something they should have already done.”

The point, though, is that the work was reliable.

Going further, with compiled log data, intensified applications, and so on, the work is even more exciting.

“There’s some prediction by our colleagues that we are setting up the wave of the future,” said Heinrichs. “The cost of setting up brick and mortar institutions is too high, the cost of bringing people together is too high. People that are on shift can’t come together physically to learn.”

Virtually, though, is another option.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

View from the cheap seats:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/02/metaverse-u-tow.html

Thanks for the liveblogging which is very helpful.

I wonder if Beth here is creating a problem in search of a solution. People really do not need interoperability. Average users, that is. They're fine with switching over from WoW to Second Life to Skype using...Windows. And...Firefox. That's all they need, really, works *good enough*.

And Beth herself seems to be saying this, so I'm confused -- she's saying cosplay is illustrative of people *not* needing interoperability. Interoperability seems to me -- so far -- as just the copyleftist open-source hacker movement in a new guise. It's an ideological movement based on a certain set of precepts that are not absolutes nor conceded by all -- and one of the doctrines seems to be about positing a "need" or a "desire" for this that isn't demonstrated with actual polling or even good journalism. Beth talks about crowd-sourcing. Could we just have an old-fashioned sociological survey of gamers and worlders?

Um, "possibly" overlaid? Or actually? And...what's underneath the Arab city? And...why is building over an Arab city *necessarily* something evil? Sounds like another round of demonizing Israel to me.

[Joey Seiler]

I'm off at GDC this week, so I'm rushing around, but I wanted to clarify one thing about the Israeli town/Arab village thing that I think I may have made less clear than Coleman did. The issue isn't demonizing Israel, it's that if a map shows the town built over an Arab village, it may give the Arab community more grounds to push for repossession of it/the area. Obviously, if it's incorrect (and Coleman made the point that the possibly incorrect Google Map as well as a separate news story showing the Israeli town on a beach are equally important examples of one digital reality affecting the reality), the Israeli town would have a reason to be upset.

As far as interoperability goes, her point about Cosplay is that users are already remixing content (I think). We talk about the need, but people are already finding ways around.

My memory (now in the fourth straight day of lectures and panels) probably isn't doing her justice, and, as always, my liveblog may have inconsistencies. I type a little slower as the weekend goes on.

Best,
Joey

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, I'd love to see all the relevant articles and what was actually said, but it still sounds like demonization to me: making an assumption flatly that if an Arab village is found underneath an Israeli village, that there's some sort of absolute moral right to displace these Israelis and return the territory to the Palestinians. That's why I ask: but what was under the Arab village?

I'm going to be that the Google map and the news story were both tilted, and both overzealous because the lurched towards a knee-jerk demonization -- they went out looking for trouble, and they found it. And even if they *did* find an overlaid Arab village, the question can still be asked: but how will you adjudicate this fairly? It's not an automatic.