The next episode of BBC Radio 4’s Digital Human sees presenter Aleks Krotoski takes a look a voice, or rather the lack of voice in online communications :
In this weeks Digital Human Aleks Krotoski asks if the Digital world is robbing us of our voice. When we’d rather text or message than speak to someone are we still listening?
While radio may well be thriving look at just about every other digital device and its pictures , video and text communication that dominates. So what is the future for the voice?
This has potential to be interesting, although this show runs for less than half an hour so they may not be able to squeeze enough in but voice is an issue that has been raised in many a virtual world and has been a bone of contention in Second Life since it was introduced.
So why is voice a second class means of communication online? I haven’t done any research into this but I would hazard a guess that some of the reasons are to do with identity, some of the reasons are to do with language barriers and some of the reasons are to do with the online experience being so visually rich, text simply has more mileage in the tank. However as virtual worlds become more immersive, this may change.
In February 2007 Joe Linden blogged : Bringing Voice to Second Life and over 500 comments appeared below the post, many of them disagreeing with the addition of voice. Some of the comments on that blog post explain why voice isn’t as widely accepted as text :
“The voice ‘improvement’ avoids one obvious issue… In what human language are all the voices to use? English? Chinese? Spanish? Portuguese? It’s bad enough bridging the language barriers when we are IMing (where one has time to think, compose, and apply rules of grammar and remember foreign words over a span of time)… But speaking demands faster recall and faster integration of language elements in real time… tough in one’s own language… sometimes almost impossible in another language… Good luck, but I have my doubts….”
“I suppose this was inevitable, but it will further divide those for whom Second Life is a truly second life, very possibly a fantasy life, from those for whom SL is an extension of their first life. I wonder if there will end up having to be a grid (from LL or someone else) where those who don’t just want another first life will be able to go.”
“Anoynimty has always been one of the main points of SL. Until it can be perserved then their should be no voice like Philip Linden originaly said.”
“But you have to understand the emotions and fear of the other people playing here that don’t want to use voice, either if they can’t speak well or don’t want to show their identity. SL is in my opinion a place used for leisure, fun, relaxation and even psychotherapy.
If you introduce this babylonian tower this will be the first step of isolation by nations. While chatting you still can look up the dictionary or take your time to answer. This is not possible while having a live talk. And don’t forget the dialects. not everybody speaks a clear tongue understandable even for foreigners.”
There are other objections there, people in homes with families where they don’t want to engage in voice chat because others are in the home. Females in particular have complained of being harassed about not using voice and then been accused of not really being females.
Then there’s the simple issue of text being easier for multitasking able to catch up with the conversation, whether it’s a one on one conversation or group chat. I know that many people in Second Life will be doing something else whilst communicating, they may be building, they may be reading something else, they may be scripting, but with text chat they can keep up, in voice chat, those pauses between replies are easily noticed and become uncomfortable.
However that’s not to say voice chat is a complete fail, some of the concerns about polarised communities and exclusion based on those who voice chat and those who don’t haven’t really materialised and it should be noted that voice chat has been a part of Second Life for the majority of its existence.
There were also many positive comments about the introduction of voice, particularly amongst educators who felt it was a wonderful introduction and in a virtual classroom environment, voice chat is certainly a very useful addition.
However, what of the future? Will the rise of virtual reality bring more voice chat to our virtual world experiences? There’s an interesting comment on that blog post from 2007 :
This new feature sounds interesting and a big step towards virtual reality in the sense of full immersion.
What makes that comment interesting is where virtual worlds are heading some seven years after that comment. Jo Yardley recently blogged about her use of Oculus Rift in Second Life and in that post Jo says :
One thing that did disappoint me a lot was that it is pretty much impossible to use your keyboard while wearing the Rift. You may think that this an obvious conclusion, but it affected me more than I expected.For instance I can type without seeing my keyboard, I’ve been a fast blind typist for years. But I guess I need my peripheral vision more than I expected.
If you want to communicate or build or do something a little more than just walking around, you keep removing the headset to see the keyboard. And that is not good. Enabling people to communicate and interact is going to be a tough job.
The obvious solution there is of course voice chat but that in itself would mean a culture shift from how people currently use Second Life and that would introduce some of the polarising issues that people raised about the introduction of voice chat all those years ago. People are still going to want to communicate in text, people are still going to want to roleplay, but as virtual worlds get more immersive I strongly suspect that voice chat will start to become the more prevalent means of communication, with voice morphing software becoming more popular too, the virtual world will change as people experience more immersive environments.
For now text remains king and for many people, that’s a very positive position.
For all of the reasons I’ve grown tired of stating time and time again, voice chat will NOT replace text in SL or OpenSim. Oh, do add the fact that many of those voice chat services are riddled with gaping security holes. It will not become more prevalent, just as the Oculus Rift or other “total immersion” one-trick ponies (even combined with gesture control gadgets) will not replace the way we currently use SL or OpenSim or what have you. Mind you, despite what Drax & Jo keep on saying about how the Oculus/Leap Motion (or other gesture control gadget)/voice combination will replace our mouse/keyboard/monitor cobmination, people don’t see it that way. It’s simple as that. Just because two podcast presenters have fallen in love with a certain device and just because the media and certain companies that need to overhype their products to ensure and maximise profit are overhyping these products (like they overhyped SL way back) does not mean people will by them en masse.
Well it won’t replace text chat in SL or Opensim as we know it, as the environment makes it more productive to use text.
However if either develop more immersive solutions, voice chat will naturally become more popular, it will have to if text chat becomes more difficult to engage with.
SL is over 10 years old now, over the next 10 years the virtual world experience will most definitely change.
Typo in the last line: buy, not by
The funny thing is that i’m always using voice when on sl or open sim, as im always connected to my soul mate via Skype.
Perhaps one of the reasons why i feel lately im not communicating in world, cause im typing worse and worse.
Still, unless voice morphing can be much more effective i still think it will never replace chat and Mona stated a lot better then me why.
About the rift and all that, for sure it is a lot of hype but it will happen, just i don’t know if before internet ends as we know it.