Giulio Prisco Has Been Talking About Religion In Virtual Reality, Will It Work For Him This Time?

The First Church Of Rosedale

A couple of posts from physicist and computer scientist, Giulio Prisco. The posts are linked to each other. The first post was published on Hypergrid Business : Virtual reality a new frontier for religions. In that post Giulio talks about churches in virtual reality. In that post Giulio revists some of the ground he has covered before, which I covered when Giulio had been talking about the book Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life by Robert M. Geraci.

In the Hypergrid Business article Giulio says :

The book reports that many groups in mainstream religions, including Christianity and Islam, established a virtual presence in Second Life, often bypassing institutional channels and creating grassroots communities instead. These virtual communities are often independent of traditional religious hierarchies, and much more open to inter-faith dialogue and alternative lifestyles.

Physical churches can and do work together, I know that the local Catholic and Baptist churches near me have joint ventures in terms of open days and money raising causes for example, but could virtual reality help people to make those links and alliances without the structure of their own church leaders? This is an interesting thought process. Giulio goes on to suggest that new religions may be formed in the metaverse :

The chapter “Sacred Second Lives” of Virtually Sacred is dedicated to new, emerging religious movements in Second Life. Perhaps more than established religions, new “native” metaverse religions will be able to take full advantage of the endless possibilities of virtual reality and offer a spiritual home to multitudes of people worldwide, especially those who search spiritual meaning independently, outside the legacy framework of mainstream religions.

I don’t think Giulio was talking about The First Church Of Rosedale when he wrote that. Especially as The First Church Of Rosedale is Second Life only and has as its tagline :

There is no Chairman but Philip,
And Torley is His Prophet.
The first church devoted to an entirely SL-focused religion!

Samantha Poindexter has a lot to answer for!

Inside The First Church Of Rosedale

Rosedale Commandments

The second post from Giulio has been published over at the IEET: Virtual reality a new frontier for religions. In that post Giulio talks more about virtual worlds in general. At this stage I should point out that it’s fairly safe to say that Giulio is jaded by Second Life, Indeed in 2012 Giulio publised an article at IEET : Snow Crash(ed) in Second Life (end 2012) :

These days I have the impression that Second Life (SL) is a dead alien world populated by the ghosts of a few former inhabitants who refuse to go.

However he did hold out some hope :

I wonder whether SL and other immersive virtual worlds still have a future, and whether Stephenson’s Metaverse can still become a reality.

The latter quote is more in line with the latter article from Giulio, he seems to believe in virtual worlds again. However his hope still doesn’t really seem to extend to Second Life :

There have been intense debates about just why Second Life didn’t live up to the high expectations of the years 2006-2009, when it was all over the press as the Next Big Thing that would soon disrupt and take over online communications. My favorite theory is that Second Life is too difficult to use and not immersive enough for mass adoption. These two factors seem separate, but they are linked.

Virtual reality rendered on a small laptop screen, only navigable with legacy mouse and keyboard interfaces developed in the 70s – which most of today’s Internet consumers never mastered anyway – isn’t the virtual reality imagined by Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash) and Ernest Cline (Ready Player One). What Stephenson and Cline envisaged is a fully immersive 360-degree real virtuality that users can navigate and control with intuitive head, body and hands motion and voice commands, just like they do in real life.

Technology is of course moving in the direction Giulio talks about. Oculus Rift will bring more immersive environments, motion sensors will bring more realism to our avatars, how realistic is open to debate. Personally I don’t think VR will ever quite make the shift to immersion being completely realistic, I don’t actually think it’s a bad thing. Last night I saw a tweet from Palmer Luckey of Oculus VR :

Meetings have been possible in Second Life for quite some time, and other similar platforms. Whereas VR meetings of the future will be more immerive, I still think they will lack breath, yes breath, not breadth. I can’t ever see a virtual hug being able to replace a physical hug. The touch, taste, smell and feel is something I simply can’t see being replace. Well that is unless you are one of those people who already believes we are all living in a virtual world. However meeting in VR will hopefully improve discourse. However let’s get back to Giulio. Giulio has launched a new project to form a Virtual Turing Church. Whether this will be a success remains to be seen but there do seem to be some noble aims : 

The Turing Church is a virtual place of contemplation, discussion and learning, and a community of scientifically minded persons who are also open to and interested in spiritual and religious visions, compatible with science. We are not interested in developing a new, rigid doctrine. We are interested in developing a loose framework of ideas, concepts, hopes, feelings and sensibilities at the intersection of science and religion, compatible with many existing and new frameworks. This is why we call the Turing Church a meta-religion.

This is a project worth keeping an eye on even if you’re not spiritual or religious because it’s about community building in VR spaces and if VR doesn’t build communities it’s not likely to have long lasting appeal.    

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