Some other types of distributed virtual environments than those presented so far and which make semi-contemporaneous conversation possible at a distance do actually exist. These range from on-line conferencing systems developed around the use of video and audio technologies, to text-based environments like Talk and Internet Relay Chat Rooms (IRC) and finally object-oriented environments often known as Multi-user dimensions, Object-Oriented (MOO). All three last-mentioned types of distributed environment make it possible to arrange virtual meeting spaces where people all over the world can meet and chat with one another by writing in real-time.
Object-oriented environments, however, introduce further dimensions of interactivity: participants may move about from space to space within the virtual environment. They may also interact with and change the virtual objects[5] that go to make up the virtual environment. This allows them to design, create and modify various key characteristics of the virtual environment that they are interacting in (and with) while they are actually `in there'. Programmers can cooperate with one another at the same time as they are modelling and building the environment, discussing effects of modifying or adding new functions and structures with other participants while this is actually being done.
This is claimed to make programming and debugging work in object-oriented environments of this kind highly effective. Masinter and Ostrom enthuse for instance that:
"The multi-user aspect of MOO has several significant implications. First, it makes it easy for people to work together. When using an information resource privately, the user has to be lucky enough to have a helpful person around, or may end up mailing out a plea for help to some mailing list or newsgroup. When using MOO, the user is fairly likely to find direct interaction with someone helpful. In addition, MOO provides a way for people who are simply after the same kind of information to work together to find it. This is of course simple enough for people physically located in the same room, but collaboration across a greater distance can be very difficult.
Second, the fact that MOO provides easy interaction between people, and that MOO information tools, programmed in MOO code, can be easily manipulated from within an interactive session, means bugs can be fixed and new features and tools added very quickly. It is usually difficult for the implementor of a software tool to observe, first hand, how the tool is being used. In MOO, this kind of interaction is frequent: by observing the errors and misunderstandings of novice users, the implementor can see the ways in which a user interface is confusing or awkward. It's often hard for an ordinary user of a piece of software to provide adequate information for the programmer to locate a bug. But in MOO sessions, the users can talk about problems, the developers can work with them, possibly adding debugging information to the code as it's being used, to figure out what exactly is going on. And often the problems can be located and fixed on the fly, in a matter of a few minutes."[6]
This rather unusual `hyper-interactionality' of object-oriented environments, which allows not only for interactions with others, but also interactions with the virtual environment, as well as interactions with others about these interactions while they actually are going on, which makes conversations in these environments qualitatively different from conversations in other types of distributed virtual environment, bringing them, as we shall discuss in some more detail later on, even closer to that which actually goes on in most face-to-face situations.
This raises some provocative theoretical and methodological questions with regard to our more general understandings of what conversation is, and how it actually works. We shall suggest a methodology which is designed to allow for an incorporation of the specific hyper-interactionality aspect of object-oriented environments mentioned above into ethnographies of conversation in general. A simple analytical taxonomy will be presented which pays special attention to the accomodation of not only qualitatitive differences, but also similarities, between face-to-face conversations and conversations in distributed virtual environments. This taxonomy may be useful as a tool for making enthnographies of face-to-face conversations where what is going on comprises various forms of participant action, and is not merely confined to talk.It will also address the problem of how to categorize attempts on the part of participants to make the transition between certain types of non-ratified and ratified participant status.