It's the 21st century. You can choose your clothing and make your own money. You can build houses and drive cars, form relationships, have sex, fall in love - all through your computer screen.
In his documentary film "Life 2.0," Jason Spingarn-Koff '96 examines what he calls "the world's first virtual world" - Second Life. Launched in June 2003 by Linden Lab, Second Life allows users to create simulated avatars that inhabit a vast virtual environment he says is "sophisticated enough that people feel it is real."
In his documentary set to come out next year, Spingarn-Koff says he has filmed a small cross-section of users over a period of two years so that viewers can see the dramatic transformations users experience through Second Life.
Second Life is compelling because every avatar is a real person and all of the content is generated by its users, setting it apart from similar life-simulation programs like "The Sims," Spingarn-Koff says. In Second Life, users invest real money to buy land from Linden Lab and then create homes, clothing and other material items in the virtual world. For this reason, he says, Second Life's virtual world has more connections to the real world than any other program before this time.
"It's kind of like a psychological petri dish," he says.
A 'fantasy relationship'
"Life 2.0," which Spingarn-Koff hopes to release on television and in theaters next year, follows three main story lines. In the first, a man from Canada and a woman from New York fall in love in the virtual world through their avatars and then meet up in real life and form a relationship. Though Spingarn-Koff says people often make their avatars look and act like themselves, he says there are also many challenges to translating a relationship from the virtual world into the real world.
"It's hard to make a real relationship as good as their fantasy relationship," he says. "There are all these real world challenges that come up."
These challenges include pregnancy, sickness and death - difficult life issues that can't be found in the virtual world.
"Their sense of reality is so mixed up now that their memories are blended," Spingarn-Koff says. "Sometimes they're not sure what was real and what was virtual."
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Theresa DiDonato wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the virtual world can often be a substitute - rather than a supplement - to the real world.
"My concern when it comes to these games is that people still need real relationships with real people. We have a fundamental need to connect with others, and when it comes down to it, there's really no adequate substitution for real interpersonal interactions," she wrote. "I worry that their real-world context is not affording them ample opportunity to be with others, or that they lack the sense of belonging that they need."
But one way Second Life does mirror the real world is in its focus on money. Users can convert virtual money, or "Linden dollars," into real money, which is the springboard for "Life 2.0"'s second story line.
The film follows an African-American woman in Detroit who lives with her parents and develops a business making virtual clothing and virtual houses out of her basement. A graphic designer, the woman builds a six-figure salary off her designs. Her plans go well until another user robs her store, her business crashes and she is left to pick up the pieces in both the virtual and the real worlds.
Spingarn-Koff says the robbery offers an example of the potential effects of the virtual world on the real world.
Since property is protected by copyright in Second Life, users have brought several cases to court. In one case, settled in a Brooklyn court, a thief was ordered to cease his actions and pay a small fine, according to Spingarn-Koff.
"They treated (the designs) as property and the actions as theft," Spingarn-Koff says. "What interests me is when the real and the virtual cross paths."
One reason the real-world government might have to step in is that there is no government in Second Life. Linden acts as what Spingarn-Koff calls a "benevolent monarchy," setting up the main rules and acting in cases of extreme misbehavior. But he says the company has decided to allow the virtual world to be mainly self-governing, until users decide to establish a government on their own.
In fact, the virtual economy may be more realistic than some imagine, Spingarn-Koff says.
"It seems to be somewhat tracking the real economy," he says. According to a Reuters blog that reports on Second Life, the virtual economy has risen and dipped alongside the Dow Jones, mirroring the recent woes and even yesterday's recovery.
But those who might want to hide their faces - or their identities - after the latest stock projections have that opportunity in the virtual world.
Life 2.0's third story line is about a man in his thirties who creates the avatar of an 11-year-old girl. He is part of a subsection of adults who pretend to be children in the program. Since users must be 13 or older, many children in Second Life are actually adults.
Spingarn-Koff says the man believes his avatar is an expression of his subconscious and has a life of her own.
In this sense, he says, the program could be used for good. "I think psychologists will have a field day with some of the stuff I'm uncovering," he says.
DiDonato agrees.
"Second Life can give you a chance to experiment with a different side of yourself. You need not be the same person on-line as you are off-line, and this may give you a chance to better understand yourself," she wrote. "Psychologists have long understood that we have a varied, multi-faceted self-concept. Trying on a different self in the virtual world can be positive."
But Spingarn-Koff also says the idea of simulated children in a virtual world can have real-world legal implications. For example, in the United States, simulated pedophilia is illegal and is not generally protected as free speech.
In Second Life, people are meeting in a virtual, international space, so determining which laws govern them is tricky. Generally, the decision comes down to where the Internet server is located. Still, Linden Research has decided to outlaw any depictions of lewd acts involving children.
"What's so interesting about Second Life is it's always more complicated than you can imagine, which is why I do documentary and not feature film," Spingarn-Koff says.
Science fiction or science fact?
Spingarn-Koff says he had planned to study filmmaking as an undergraduate and then become a doctor. Since he could not get into the Modern Culture and Media filmmaking class as a freshman, he joined a computer graphics group headed by Professor of Computer Science Andy van Dam. He switched his concentration to history, but also took three years of MCM classes and learned filmmaking during his free time at the computer graphics lab.
After graduating, Spingarn-Koff moved to Berlin and took an interest in documentary filmmaking, before returning to the United States to study journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.
But Spingarn-Koff says though he never became a doctor, he has been able to further explore his interests in science and technology through his films.
His first fictional film at Brown attempted to give a 10-minute glimpse of the history and future of mankind, ending with the character entering virtual reality.
"It's funny because while I was at Brown, I put away the whole academic science interest," Spingarn-Koff says. "But then when I became a documentary filmmaker, I specialized in science."
He added that he is interested in modern realizations of what was once seen as science fiction.
His master's thesis at Berkeley was about the quest to build a robotic fly and involved aspects of science and technology. Biologists studied fly motion and then others built the fly to the scientists' observations. "Robofly," a film which ran on the Public Broadcasting Service, won a National Student Television Award - the "Emmy" of student filmmaking.
"Honestly, while I was at Brown it didn't all congeal into a firm career path," he says. "It was only later on that I was able to combine all these interests into documentary filmmaking."
Fittingly, 20th- and 21st-century improvements in technology have played enormous roles in Spingarn-Koff's academic and career development. Because the Internet was born when he was an undergraduate at Brown, Spingarn-Koff says he and his peers did not have many of the same technological luxuries as filmmakers today. They used tape-to-tape editing, rather than professional editing software. Spingarn-Koff says he created one of the first digital films within the MCM department.
Spingarn-Koff says the concept of virtual reality as seen in Second Life was purely science fiction when he was in college. There was a notion of a three-dimensional, computer-generated world that people would inhabit, but it was seen as futuristic and infeasible.
Now, with programs like Second Life, he says the idea does not seem so crazy - and the consequences are real.
"It should be approached with caution. It can be a force for enormous good but it can also be a place where people can get in over their heads. I think people need to know that it can have a profound impact on their sense of self and their relationships in the real world," he says. "It's not a game."
