Various people in our lab attended the on-line Facebook Connect today. And I think the fundamental problem with it was the same as the problem I saw at Burning Man in AltSpace.
The entire system is set up to throw you in with complete strangers. There seems to be no accommodation for people who want to share the experience.
Perhaps there is such an accommodation, and I couldn’t find it. But one would think that would be the first consideration in any shared social media experience in VR.
Given that you don’t have the normal cues for vetting people, all of the issues of finding yourself in a group of strangers are magnified. I don’t think that is a fundamental problem with VR, but I do think it is something that needs to be addressed very well and up front.
We don’t give up on automobiles because they are potentially dangerous. Instead, we develop regulations and require people to wear seatbelts.
So where are the seatbelts for socially shared VR?
Potential seatbelts: location-based filters? friends filters? friends’ friends?
At the beginning of internet, and also till now, ppl surf along, if ppl want to surf “together”, maybe there should be another kind of internet (for “together”), this different kinds of internet emerged at different times, maybe one right now, and another 20 years later