Virtual Exploration of Real Possibilities
Computer-controlled manufacturing technologies, combined with information technologies capable of supporting new forms of social organization, have the potential to take humanity far beyond the industrial revolution, to an economy in which many products of value in daily life are produced again locally in small workshops. Large corporations will still be significant but playing somewhat different roles. They will provide much of the machinery used in local manufacturing, the computer-aided design software used to personalize each product, and the communication systems that support cooperation between people and technologies. It seems likely that some categories of products will be suitable for a franchise system, in which a multinational corporation will set standards and provide methods, working through legally established relationships with a system of locally owned workshops. Imagination can explore a variety of possibilities, but for the past two decades a virtual online experiment has taken place from which insights and ideas may be derived: massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
Over four decades ago, a leading innovator of information technology advocated the use of advanced electronic communication systems to support the return of population from the cities of the industrial era to towns and villages. His name was Peter Goldmark, and he was largely responsible for the development of long-playing phonographs and had contributed to the development of color television. After retirement from CBS laboratories in 1971, Wikipedia reports,
he pursued research on the use of communication technologies to provide services like teleconferencing and remote medical consultations to people in rural areas. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation in the early 1970s, the “New Rural Society Project” was housed at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn., and conducted pilot studies across the state in Eastern Connecticut’s relatively rural Windham region.1
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) online grant database does not confirm its support, and another source implies that it may have been a small contribution within “generous funding from the federal Departments of Housing and Urban Development (over $700,000) and the Transportation ($150,000) and the National Science Foundation.”2
In a 1972 Scientific American article predicting the development of today’s networked society, Goldmark noted, “Cities exist largely because they enhance communications.”3 In a cascade of speeches and even in the Congressional Record, he argued that large cities waste energy, notably through daily commuting to and from work, and that they promote crime and disintegrate social relationships.4 Were he alive today, he would rejoice in the widespread adoption of Internet, complain that society had failed to rebuild local communities, and quite possibly suggest that multiplayer online games were valuable simulations of the future he hoped would come.
Whether abbreviated MMORPG, or more efficiently if imprecisely MMO, massively multiplayer online role-playing games attracted millions of players and billions of dollars to play activities that focused on adventure stories and simulated combat. But in the background of most popular examples was a virtual economy incorporating simulated gathering of raw materials and production of valuable goods. These were not limited to medieval-style weapons and body armor, but included foods, fashionable clothing, transportation vehicles, and even houses and the furniture to fill them. Often, players bought and sold such manufactured items through an in-game marketplace or traded them among groups of friends. MMOs are persistent worlds, the oldest one analyzed here having flourished for over 20 years, and players were encouraged to create enduring social groups, typically called guilds, which perhaps not coincidentally was the name for professional societies in the decades prior to the industrial revolution. In April 2008, the author of this book created a guild named Science specifically to hold a scientific conference in World of Warcraft, the most popular MMO which had about 12,000,000 subscribers, at which 120 academics discussed the significance of virtual worlds, leading to publication of a conventional book on that topic.5 At the time of the last report, that guild was still active although no longer serving research functions, thus one example of how virtual social systems can endure and evolve.
On the basis of intensive study of 30 MMOs, this book will explore several dimensions of online simulation of local production. Although not designed by academics to test scientific theories, they serve as intellectually rich simulations, all the more informative because they were designed by smart, technologically sophisticated enthusiasts who not only had their own ideas about human cooperation, but also learned from each other and from the players who responded with varying levels of enthusiasm to the designers’ innovations. Many academic studies have found real merit in research on MMOs, identifying many connections to real-world socioeconomic systems.6 Using Jay Forester’s academic simulations of cities as his classical example, Matthew Wells has argued that even seriously intended academic computer models blur the distinction between fact and fiction and that many of the more complex computer games should be taken seriously.7
Much of the research effort invested to date in small-scale distributed manufacturing has employed the conceptualization of the maker movement and focused on its educational potential, whereas also suggesting that very practical benefits could result. Wikipedia describes this movement as “a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture.”8 “Literally meaning ‘do it yourself,’ the DIY ethic promotes the idea that anyone is capable of performing a variety of tasks rather than relying on paid specialists.”9 However, the long-term result is likely to be a workforce collaborating along a spectrum from amateur to professional, not “do it yourself” but “do it ourselves.”
For example, a June 12, 2015, press release of the NSF was titled “New paths to innovation and learning through DIY technologies” and announced:
Today, the nation of makers proves it has no borders, as do-it-yourself engineers, inventors and tinkerers of all ages and backgrounds converge at the National Maker Faire. The National Science Foundation (NSF) directly supports many of the exhibitors—known as “makers”—participating in the faire, with even more exhibitors using NSF-funded tools and technologies, such as 3-D printing and computer-aided design. The faire is a kickoff event for the National Week of Making June 12–18, which celebrates the growing wave of innovators enabled by access to new resources and knowledge, known as the maker movement.10
A year earlier, an NSF news release titled “Engineering for All” praised the contributions of professionals to the liberation of amateurs:
Today’s engineers are helping to drive many of the technologies that make making possible—from 3-D printers to user-friendly design software. As high fabrication costs and complicated computer programs become a thing of the past, young inventors and DIY (do-it-yourself) enthusiasts can focus on what really matters: bringing their ideas to life.11
A prominent method for small-scale manufacture is 3-D printing or additive manufacture, originally a form of rapid prototyping, that can efficiently produce small numbers of products and change their exact specifications easily. The term “small scale” may be misleading, because a huge amount of effort has been invested in developing these technologies, and if designed and organized well these methods can manufacture large numbers of products, but with highly flexible designs that can be customized for particular users. Already by 2013, the NSF reportedly had made 600 grants totaling $200,000,000 in research on additive manufacture, primarily through its Engineering Directorate.12 An early example of widespread local manufacturing using additive manufacture is the production of unique assistive technologies, such as artificial hands customized to fit the arms of specific disabled people.13
This example is analogous to the virtual production of body armor in historical and fantasy action-oriented online games. Generally, the user is able to customize the avatar, in many cases given the opportunity to set its body size and shape. In making a virtual helmet, it is generally taken for granted that it will fit the already-determined virtual head of the avatar, so customization is generally ignored with respect to its dimensions. However, different classes of avatars are allowed to wear only particular kinds of armor, for example, steel versus leather, which require working with different simulated materials and often at different simulated machines. As is true also for academic research that employs computer simulation, some parts of a dynamic process are represented more precisely than others. We can distinguish explicit simulation, using algorithms that represent all the processes in realistic detail, from implicit simulation in which only the input and output are accurately represented. The commercial online games use a mixture of implicit and explicit, thus rendering some aspects of simulated manufacturing more precise than others.
Additive manufacture is a good example, both because its value for the future economy is clear and because it typically employs computer systems not very different from simulation graphics software to produce its products. But there are at least two other kinds of local manufacture that may be significant in the future: (1) revival of historic workshop production of everyday items like furniture and dishware and (2) creation of community-related information resources. This book emphasizes simulated manufacture of physical objects, but information products are also covered, notably schematics or instructions about how to manufacture physical products.
Arguably, mass production of many durable household items, and also personal clothing, was historically connected with a particular phase in economic growth, beginning well over a century ago.14 Very prosperous families, however, often filled their homes with antique furniture and their kitchens with distinctive dishes and wore highly customized clothing, at least for formal occasions. If society stabilizes with a significant fraction of the population able to afford goods that are more costly than the absolute minimum, then production of local goods will increase, designed not only to serve the desires of individual customers, but also to harmonize with local cultures.
We can suggest that additive manufacturing can be paired with subtractive manufacturing. Computers are quite capable of controlling lathes and wood-carving machinery, for example, to make distinctive legs for a dining table intended to serve its family in their preferred style. Automatic drilling and milling machines have existed for decades, and Wikipedia reports recent progress:
Milling covers a wide variety of different operations and machines, on scales from small individual parts to large, heavy-duty gang milling operations. It is one of the most commonly used processes for machining custom parts to precise tolerances. Milling can be done with a wide range of machine tools. The original class of machine tools for milling was the milling machine (often called a mill). After the advent of computer numerical control (CNC), milling machines evolved into machining centers: milling machines augmented by automatic tool changers, tool magazines or carousels, CNC capability, coolant systems, and enclosures.15
Recently, a number of research projects have been initiated to look at how mobile information technologies are supporting the emergence of a gig economy, in which work is done outside fixed locations and set periods of time, which is certainly the case for simulated production in online virtual worlds. Well-known physical world examples are the taxi and delivery transportation companies Uber and Lyft.16 However, even bank tellers and department store workers may find themselves working part-time now, with few if any benefits or job security, because the information systems in these businesses reduce the need for expertise and perhaps even trustworthiness on the part of the workers. Thus, the gig economy is controversial, because it may be used as a tool to reduce the power and pay of the workers. One unintended consequence may be that many part-time workers will have “free time” to devote to a future commercialized version of the maker movement, earning extra money while gaining specialized skills.
In local manufacture, as is already the case for house repair, much of the work may by its very nature be part-time, dynamic in the skills required as well as the hours invested. However, this instability may turn out to be to the benefit of energetic workers who are able to combine two or more lines of work and are attracted to projects that are personally interesting precisely because they are not dumb, repetitive, assembly-line labor. Serious research is only just beginning, but here are excerpts of the online abstracts describing two grants from the NSF that suggest the dynamic innovation taking place in the evolving gig economy:
Torin Monahan, Digital Platforms and the Mediation of Technological Change: “Digital platforms provide the fundamental infrastructure for independent contractors working in the ‘gig economy’ as well as for workers in the warehousing and shipping organizations that handle distribution for companies like Amazon. By generating findings about local mediation of platform capitalism, this study will produce recommendations for regional governments and firms looking to navigate these market shifts intelligently.”17
Steven Sawyer, Access to the Gig Economy: Infrastructural Competence and the Participation of Underrepresented Populations: “This research advances our understanding of how people from disadvantaged backgrounds pursue work in the so-called knowledge-based gig economy, doing contract work such as programming and writing. The research will delve into how these workers obtain, assemble, and organize digital resources, such as mobile devices, software and services, storage, security, and interconnectivity, to accomplish their jobs. These workers, especially if they lack an office, may work in coffee shops, libraries, co-working centers, and other on-the-go places. Some have routine circuits of travel and can rely on co-working spaces; some are more nomadic. Either way, they must organize and reconfigure their work resources, creating ‘mobile offices’ that provide cognitive space (attention), physical space (room to work), communications (relationships with others), and direct work resources. Digital technologies are usually necessary and require technical and social competence and financial resources. Recent studies show that this kind of work is likely to become a larger part of the future workforce.”18
This book is not the place to outline the real-world technologies currently available for local manufacturing, or to predict their future developments, but to survey two decades of simulations that may suggest issues and innovations that could be transferred from the virtual to the real. Chapter 2 provides the necessary introduction by illustrating the experiential realism of MMO social activities, starting with observation of an online music festival in the fictional world called Middle-earth and performing a census of the 487 participants to suggest how qualitative and quantitative research can be combined. Serious research in a complex virtual world requires a phase of open-ended exploration, involving in one study of Lord of the Rings Online a total of 11 research avatars distributed across its 10 world-sized instances. An overview of all 30 MMOs covered in this book prepares for brief statistical analysis of data available outside two of them, a dynamic online census of millions of World of Warcraft avatars and a worldwide census of 27 substantial Facebook groups devoted to Guild Wars 2 in English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Filipino, Thai, and Vietnamese.
Chapter 3 surveys the principles of virtual manufacturing, as a basis for understanding the social dynamics covered in later chapters. Two MMOs based in the popular Conan mythos introduce in surprising detail the evolution of human technology, from the most primitive manufacture of stone tools to the construction of physically large cities. Lacking popularity but deserving respect for their intellectual quality, A Tale in the Desert simulates over a period of 2 years the reconstruction of Ancient Egypt, in a context of human cooperation rather than conflict, and Pirates of the Burning Sea builds sailing ships in the historical context of the Caribbean in 1720. A sense of how complex simulated manufacture can become is offered by two fantasy MMOs, Shroud of the Avatar and EverQuest II.
After these introductory chapters come two that focus on the human dynamics inside and around these virtual worlds, Chapter 4 on communication channels and Chapter 5 on social structures. Teams in the process of doing combat-oriented missions coordinate their actions in real time, able to see a good deal of information about their fellows on the computer interface, exchange durable information through text chat, and talk quickly through telephone-like systems that may be either inside or outside the MMO itself. In contrast, communications about manufacturing tend to be asynchronous and often outside the game software, prominently through text-based forums and wikis that provide product descriptions and instructions for making them, as well as taking place implicitly through leaderboards and visually in videos posted at YouTube or Twitch. Among the factors encouraging asynchronous communication is the fact that virtual production is a part-time activity that requires being at a series of specialized locations, thus not assembling all co-workers in one factory over a standard workweek, and something similar may be true for many forms of future local manufacture.
The social structures of MMOs balance dynamics with reliability, reflected in the division of labor programmed into the particular game, and through persistent player organizations that have their own communication channels and may even possess virtual headquarters and manufacturing facilities. The role and status of both a player and the player’s avatar are significantly determined by the skills possessed, given that most of the time most players are not functioning within a team composed of real-world friends or family members. The skill systems give players the opportunity to make some rational decisions, notably about which skills to develop, but progress within a skill category requires considerable investment of time and effort, thus rewarding diligent workers with practical benefits and social status. Researchers have begun studying cultural variations in the organization of distributed manufacturing across nations, so research on virtual production in MMOs can by analogy be a valid way to achieve other valuable comparisons in distant virtual rather than geographic regions.19
The concluding pair of chapters concerns the context in which virtual manufacture takes place. In a very real sense, the software and database of an MMO is a system combining human intelligence with artificial intelligence.20 Much of the population is simulated by what can be called a “mob of mobs,” recognizing that gamers use mob as a contraction for mobiles, identifying computer-generated beings that can move around and perform actions.21 Their intelligence is primarily of two kinds: (1) simple machine learning in which events in the virtual world progressively change the numbers in some of the mob’s memory registers and (2) somewhat rigid hierarchical control systems in which decisions made by players within a particular context determine the mob’s next action. However stupid the individual mobs may be, the entire system is usually rather smart, simultaneously interacting worldwide with perhaps thousands of players. We cannot be sure which forms of artificial intelligence will be significant in the local manufacture of a particular range of products, for example, whether any of the machines will be personified like the mobs in MMOs. But clearly human workers will be interacting with complex and distributed information systems, onto which a good deal of the expertise required in the work will have been offloaded.
The concluding chapter surveys the simulated geography of virtual worlds, most of which depict really large territories, with substantially different conditions across multiple regions. One key variable is the culture of the non-player characters (NPCs), which shapes the missions that friendly ones give to players’ avatars and the modes of conflict generated by unfriendly ones. Most crucially, regions differ in the skills and equipment required for successful accomplishment of missions, the rough equivalent of first-world versus third-world nations on our real planet. Long distance travel takes a long time, because it requires avatar development as well as virtual transportation, a fact that focuses attention on the immediate local region. Raw materials tend to be gathered across a limited region, whereas their use in manufacture tends to take place within a town, either in a centralized set of crafting machinery or in separate workshops. Thus, MMOs do not exactly mirror the geographic realities that will shape real local manufacture, but there are significant similarities.
The past 500 years can be seen as a process of globalization of human communities, beginning with the Age of Discovery and marked today by many concerns about the possible harm caused to local communities resulting from a global economy, notably the concentration of manufacturing industries in nations with strong governments but powerless workers. Whereas computing and communication technologies have supported globalization, they also have the potential to carry us through a transition period to a time when local communities are strong again.22 Human history does not simply follow a straight-line trajectory, but has included periods in which some form of technology and associated social structure dominated for a while before receding to only moderate influence. Most obviously, tribalism built upon small prehistoric hunter-gatherer families, expanded greatly then faded as agriculture came into economic dominance, then became nearly obsolete during the industrial age as families returned to their original small size.23 To prepare for the best possible postglobal future, we need to conduct scientific research by a variety of means to develop not only the necessary technology but also appropriate forms of social organization and communication.24
1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carl_Goldmark
2 Freeze, K.J., and P.C. Goldmark. 2001. “Technological Visionary.” Presented at the IEEE Conference on the History of Telecommunications, Memorial University, St. John’s, Newfoundland, p. 7, July 25–27. ethw.org/w/images/0/0d/Freeze.pdf
3 Goldmark, P.C. September 1972. “Communication and the Community.” Scientific American 227, no. 3, pp. 142–51.
4 “Dr. Goldmark on a New Rural Society.” July 8, 1974. Congressional Record—Senate, pp. 22257–59.
5 Bainbridge, W.S., ed. 2010. Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. London: Springer.
6 Lakkaraju, K., G. Sukthankar, and R.T. Wigand. 2018. Social Interaction in Virtual Worlds. Cambridge University Press. Add more.
7 Wells, M. 2016. “Deliberate Constructions of the Mind: Simulation Games as Fictional Models.” Games and Culture 11, no. 5, pp. 528–47.
8 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture
9 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIY_ethic
10 www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=135397
11 www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131735
12 Weber, C., V. Peña, M. Micali, E. Yglesias, S. Rood, J.A. Scott, and B. Lal. 2013. The Role of the National Science Foundation in the Origin and Evolution of Additive Manufacturing in the United States. Washington, DC: IDA Science & Technology Policy Institute.
13 Buehler, E., S. Branham, A. Ali, J.J. Chang, M.K. Hofmann, A. Hurst, and S.K. Kane. 2015.“ Sharing is Caring: Assistive Technology Designs on Thingiverse.” In Proceedings of CHI 2015, 525–34. New York, NY: ACM.
14 Livesay, H.C., and P.G. Porter. 1969. “Vertical Integration in American Manufacturing, 1899-1948.” The Journal of Economic History 29, no. 3, pp. 494–500; Lamoreaux, N.R., D.M. Raff, and P. Temin. 2003.“Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History.” The American Historical Review 108, no. 2, pp. 404–33.
15 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milling_(machining)
16 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyft
17 nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1826545
18 nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1665386
19 Lindtner, S., S. Bardzell, and J. Bardzell. 2016. “Reconstituting the Utopian Vision of Making: HCI After Technosolutionism.” In Proceedings of CHI’16, 1390–402. New York, NY: ACM.
20 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_in_video_games
21 Bartle, R.A. 2004. Designing Virtual Worlds, 102. Indianapolis, Indiana: New Riders.
22 Freiberger, P., and M. Swaine. 1999. Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; Berners-Lee, T., with Mark Fischetti. 1999. Weaving the Web. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco; Gillies, J., and R. Cailliau. 2000. How the Web was Born. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23 Childe, V.G. 1951. Man Makes Himself. New York, NY: New American Library; Blumberg, R.L., and R.F. Winch. 1972. “Societal Complexity and Familial Complexity: Evidence for the Curvilinear Hypothesis.” American Journal of Sociology 77, no. 5, pp. 898–920.
24 Bainbridge, W.S. 2019. The Social Structure of Online Communities. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.