Live from Metaversed Island and Cornell University: Metanomics 101

by Surfdaddy Orca

METAVERSED -- On Monday September 17th, 78 avatars converged on Metaversed Island’s conferencing facilities to listen to Cornell University Professor Robert Bloomfield outline some of the key economic issues surrounding virtual worlds and the emerging metaverse. Metanomics 101 is the brainchild of Professor Bloomfield (avatar Beyers Sellers) and Nick Wilson (avatar 57 Miles) of metaversed.com It is a partnership between metaversed.com and the Cornell Johnson School of Management.

Metanomics 101 was streamed live by SLCN.tv (over 140+ streams according to metaversed.com) and broadcast by Craigster Hax for a live audience at SAP.

Beyers Sellers defines metanomics as "the economics of the metaverse." This includes not just Second Life (SL), but other virtual environments (such as World of Warcraft, Entropia, and Gaia), social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and conferencing services such as Skype. He suggested that such environments will become increasing integrated.

In laying a framework for discussion, Beyer Sellers distinguishes between two distinct economic philosophies:

Immersionists lead a parallel second life and look in-world. In Second Life, this includes Goreans, Elves, Pirates, Cowboys, and other role playing groups that are "immersed" in their separate virtual realities.

Augmentationists look at how the real world responds to virtual worlds. This includes developers, technologists, and business people looking at issues such as product development, branding, and product placement in virtual worlds.

See http://slcreativity.org/wiki/index.php?title=Augmentation_vs_Immersion

Sellers also talked briefly about "experimentalists," not necessarily distinct from immersionists or augmentationists, who attempt to model economic behavior in the laboratory (for example, insider trading or the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002). Whereas immersionists and augmentationists are "doing it" in situ, experimentalists are attempting to model it in the laboratory.

The notion of metanomics is not without its skeptics and critics. Prokofy Neva, in a fascinating post on the metaversed site, raises a series of questions on the relevance of discussing the Second Life economy and the possible consequences of the impending "cataclysm" of Linden Lab's promise to provide open source server code within the next year:

http://metaversed.com/prokofy-neva/blog/17-sep-2007/questions-metanomists

Clearly, Metanomics a timely series. Beyers Sellers and 57 Miles have created a needed forum for what promises to be lively debate and a marketplace for ideas about the metaverse. Future speakers include Sandra Kearney, IBM’s Global Director for 3D Internet (3Di) and Virtual Business.

See http://metanomics.metaversed.com/ for up-to-date posts on the series.