I’m co-teaching a class this semester at
the Law College, entitled “Governance of Virtual Worlds.” Similar courses have
been taught at Harvard’s and Stanford’s law schools, but ours is the first that
we’re aware of to take a graduate, interdisciplinary approach to the subject.
We’ll be holding course sessions in World
of Warcraft and in Second Life, a
popular game and social virtual world, respectively.
Does this mark the fall of Western
civilization and the ultimate trivialization of the academy, now that
orc-slaying is being offered for graduate credit?
Quite the contrary.
We see the course as an acknowledgement
that a second generation now is coming of age in online spaces, spaces where
important lessons of community, teamwork, management and governance are being
learned nightly by millions of people of all ages.
Few of us get our hands-on experience with
governance from the PTA, the union meeting, the bowling league, as many of our
grandparents did. But we do confront issues of leadership, of taxation,
allocation of scarce resources, management under stress – not to mention
intellectual property law, jurisdiction and conflicts of laws – in online games
and virtual worlds.
Economist Edward Castronova makes the blunt
argument that online worlds are competing directly with activities in the
actual world, competing for time, attention and money – and winning, hands
down. Economic theory holds that in a competition between two “products” –
here, digital and physical communities – the less attractive one can either
change, taking on the features that the competition has proven to be more
popular – or wither away.
Will we soon hear calls for a “reality
bailout," when tens of millions of Americans have chosen to work, play,
create, buy, sell, share, and socialize in ever-improving digital spaces while
physical infrastructure decays around them? Will brick and mortar employers
restructure management and work flows in a desperate attempt to draw people out
of gaming guilds and away from online entrepreneurial businesses?
Oh, wait – that was last year’s news.
And that’s why we’re teaching a course on
the governance of virtual worlds. That second generation of online citizens can
benefit from a strong theoretical understanding of their worlds, and the rest
of us need to know of the cultures and institutions that are beginning to beat
those of the physical world at their own game.
As the science fiction novelist William
Gibson says, “the future is already here – it’s just unevenly distributed.”
