It's not all black and white.
The whole immersion versus augmentation debate is clouded by one trivial little detail. One is not the opposite of the other. The two aren't even mutually exclusive.
Traditionally these two are generally classified like this:
Augmentationists see the virtual world as a simple extension of RL. It's another space in which things can be done. Like IRC, or the Web or Twitter, or the telephone. It extends what is possible to the user, augmenting their abilities. The augmented user remains themselves throughout, and their activities are simply enhanced. The augmented love things that extend and improve their ability to accomplish.
Immersionists are described as those who see the their time in Second Life as an alternative to the real. They take on new appearances and entirely new personae, quite different to their own. Immersonists hate anything that distracts from their sense of a new, alternative universe.
That's how those are usually defined. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit.
Augmented and immersed aren't opposite points on a spectrum. They're two spectra that cross over at right-angles. Being augmented has no effect on the level of immersion you feel. The level of immersion you feel is not affected by the level of augmentation. Particularly the term immersion is confused by the fact that it has multiple meanings, and most of the people who are strongly immersed by no means fit the commonly accepted definition above.
Virtual worlds are, by nature, somewhat immersive. Unlike video game worlds, virtual worlds are immersive because they contain people. Actual, real people. Just like the kind you see at the grocery store, in the bank, and at the office - unmotivated by contrived game mechanics.
Talking to them in Second Life is just like talking to them on the street corner, or at a coffee shop. Virtual worlds are immersive because they represent the same complex social interplay and situations that you get in the physical world. If you think that Second Life is more full of drama than the physical world, you probably don't get out much.
Immersion is when you identify with your avatar as a part of you - as an extension of yourself. People who aren't terribly well immersed generally don't stay in Second Life, or grief. Just as they don't connect with their avatar as an extension of themselves, they don't see the avatars of others as extensions of other people either. That makes Second Life seem pretty pointless to them.
Augmentation is another by-product of the virtual world. We can fly. We can handle dozens of Instant-Message conversations at once. We can rapidly build cool things and show them to others. We can educate, talk, converse, collaborate, all as if we were together in the same space - because we are.
There are some people who view their Second Life as an alternate life, though there are comparatively very few of them. Many of them are quite high on the augmentation scale too.
The whole seeming-struggle between augmentationists and immersionists is just so much smoke. There aren't two camps going on here. They're not dueling to death over the future of the platform. It's mostly a false Us and Them distinction that distracts and diverts quite unnecessarily.
1. Very well written and a very good point. I've always felt the whole dichotomy alien when trying to assimilate it. Articles like "Giulio Prisco - Life 2.0: Augmentationists in Second Life and beyond" (http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/prisco20070812/), that sort of based the whole line of reason on the dichotomy sure were no help.
I was about to pick a particular piece, which would be good for references. But it's useless.. Can't we just put the whole article in a wiki somewhere?
Posted at 11:11AM on Aug 24th 2007 by Sin Trenton