I suppose though, that the one really important issue that we need to discuss here is as follows: is the particular type of phenomenon outlined above something we really ought to describe as a kind of `artificial life' or not? To some extent these virtual worlds are fundamentally `artificial', in the respect that they are always mediated by the communication technology used to create them. This leads us to the even more fundamental question of whether it will ever really be possible to develop computer and communication systems that are sufficiently powerful to adequately simulate and facilitate the continuity of representation and negotiation of meaning that is implicit in the evolution and development of human cultures. If we want to even begin to scratch the surface of the highly complex processes of interaction and making-meaning that constitute human societies and cultures there certainly seems to be an enormous amount of work waiting to be done.
Perhaps we ought even now just begin resigning ourselves to the fact that what we are looking at here in this transcript is a demonstration of `real life' in the process of asserting itself yet again, in spite of the obvious limitations of the communication technology facilitating the constitution of this kind of virtual social field? Are we merely witnessing human beings starting to `colonise', and at the same time perhaps challenging and revitalising what I often refer to as the long-dead metaphor of `artificial intelligence', a concept based to all intents and purposes on algorithmic, procedural, computerlike models of the human mind and consciousness? In doing so, perhaps these emerging virtual colonies of communities are opening up for completely new kinds of evolutionary and developmental studies of language and culture?
At the very least, the considerable methodological and personal challenges for scientists studying this particular kind of phenomenon open up many new perspectives, especially with regard to which kinds of research techniques and methodologies might be deemed adequate for investigating the relationship between the continuity implicit in the process of evolution and the more broken, or fragmented aspects of individual (i.e. ontogenetic) and sociocultural constitution of language and culture in virtual environments. The evolving textual norms of communities of scientists and scholars working together in these distributed virtual environments (and there are already a large number of these already being established and developing in scope and complexity via the Internet) seem to exhibit, at least potentially, new variants of language and interactional norm-systems. This newness is in some ways related to the fact that these communities are situated in relation to a horizon of a technological mediation, and as such, constitute an as yet fairly restricted mini-universe of life-worlds.
The key question is still, I suppose, whether or not this particular kind of technologically mediated life-world really has sufficient evolutionary qualities and a real potential for `natural' adaptation and change to allow it at some time in the future to qualify for the same kind of ontological status as the `real world' has in our individual and collective awareness, or whether they will merely turn out to be often used, but also as often neglected supplements to, or augmentations of, this world.
Bologna, Italy,