The medical profession seem to be taking quite an interest in all things virtual at the moment. The current edition of the prestigious British Medical Journal has a paper titled: Health related virtual communities and electronic support groups: systematic review of the effects of online peer to peer interactions. Similarly there is a long history of the use of Virtual Reality in medicine, especially in the treatment of pain.
While this research is not about virtual worlds it seems very likely that the potential therapeutic effects seen in other forms of virtually would be seen within VWs.
So does this add another angle to the general status of VWs argument? Forget eBay, forget free speech, what when closing or kicking someone out of a VW can be shown to impact a treatment regime and impact their health negatively?
In regards to the proposed scenario where kicking the patient or doctor out of the vw world and the possible consequences, I say this:
Eh... can't happen. You can't have an anonymous person claiming to be a doctor and giving medical advice or performing surgery or anything at all that physically affects the body of a person. People are whackos, and none of us would trust em.
Which is not to say that it would be a good idea, especially in areas where it is hard to get medical attention. But under the current regime, it just can't happen. A lot of things have to change first.
In regards to the rest: Outside of simulation, what is the point? I suppose you have something like webcam doctor's visits, but that isn't virtual reality at all. I can't see any use for the practice of medicine in a vw at all at this point. And even if eventually it does find a place, whatever you would call 'medicine' would certainly be very different from the current perception of that word.
Posted by: MM | May 15, 2004 at 15:40
Ren Reynolds>Forget eBay, forget free speech, what when closing or kicking someone out of a VW can be shown to impact a treatment regime and impact their health negatively?
If the developers did it deliberately to injure them, then they could be in trouble. If they thought it might happen, but had other reasons for doing it (eg. the damage the individual was doing was spoiling the VW for others) then they should have some defence. If they were unaware that it would injure the individual, then they're on solid ground.
Using an (imperfect) extension of (I think Yochai Benkler's) Harry Potter analogy: J. K. Rowling could expect that some people would be distessed if she were to kill off Harry Potter, but nevertheless she isn't breaking any laws if she does kill off the little jerk. However, if she deliberately killed him off so as to cause some particular fan she didn't like to have heart failure, then that would be a different matter.
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | May 16, 2004 at 07:09
Richard > Using an (imperfect) extension of (I think Yochai Benkler's) Harry Potter analogy: J. K. Rowling could expect that some people would be distessed if she were to kill off Harry Potter, but nevertheless she isn't breaking any laws if she does kill off the little jerk.
An alternative analogy is that of the fun fair. You are free to invite people onto a roller coaster knowing that some of them will potentially have a physically and mentally bad time – in the search for exhilaration one presumes, just so long as you let people know about this and have followed health and safety regulations and stuff. But you can’t just turn the thing off at 17:00 when the park closes leaving people on the ride over night or having to climb their way off.
At some point a duty of care kicks in that may override the intentionality of the creator.
A thriving peer-to-peer therapeutic community that has sprung up in a VW might want to make claims along these lines, thus by extension any group that sees it self has having _real_ community values might want to.
I know I’m pushing at / over the edge of the duty argument here, but given time I can see the ‘you built it now you have a duty for _all_ that entails’ argument solidifying, especially as more and claims for the reality and real benefits of VWs grow.
Posted by: Ren | May 16, 2004 at 09:54
Video games already have disclaimers about how rapid video movement can cause certain nervous disorders, so I guess they are going to put a disclaimer statement as long as a EULA.
I agree with the "duty of care." There are lots of consumer protections on "defective" products and certain services, so along with legal acknowledgement of virtual worlds comes legal protections and regulations.
Frank
Posted by: magicback | May 16, 2004 at 12:48
Magicback>I agree with the "duty of care." There are lots of consumer protections on "defective" products and certain services, so along with legal acknowledgement of virtual worlds comes legal protections and regulations.
What about "defective" players, who insist on spoiling a virtual world for everyone else? Do players have a "duty of care" to the virtual world?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | May 17, 2004 at 03:12
Richard > What about "defective" players, who insist on spoiling a virtual world for everyone else? Do players have a "duty of care" to the virtual world?
I think that legally that would be very hard to claim. However from an ethical point of view I think that there is a very good case for applying Social Contract theory to some virtual communities and this certainly does entail moral duties on the part of the individual.
Posted by: ren | May 17, 2004 at 03:38
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