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Future Tense, one of the revolving features on this page, presents stories and essays from the intersection of computational science and technological speculation, their boundaries limited only by our ability to imagine what will and could be.

DOI: 10.1145/1859204.1859233
Rumilisoun*
future Tense
Rebirth of Worlds
Build a digital library of pioneering virtual worlds
as a living laboratory of history and social science.

FroM elrond’s liBrarY at Rivendell in Middle Earth, I write to you about a serious threat that endangers the connection between our worlds, and possibly the worlds themselves. I am Rumilisoun, an immortal Elf lore-master and historian, responsible for preserving ancient manuscripts, artifacts, and memories. The connection I speak of, between Middle Earth and your Internet, is Lord of the Rings Online (http://www.lotro. com), and similar connections exist between our worlds and many others that are in imminent danger. Lord of the Rings Online is today quite healthy, though none can predict whether it still will be in 10 years. The history books about Middle Earth written by J.R.R. Tolkien some 60 years ago will still be read in thousands of years, translated into whatever language people use then, and the movies made from them will endure in constantly renewed digital form. Yet many virtual worlds have already died, leaving no copies in libraries.

The Matrix Online closed July 31, 2009, ending forever the possibility of directly experiencing the city depicted in the 1999 movie. An intriguing pace-travel world with an interesting philosophy, Tabula Rasa, died February 28, 2009. The Sims Online died August 1, 2008. In all three, though the companies operating them calculated they were no longer profitable, they have shown no sign of wanting to put them in the public domain. Contemporary novels in public libraries cut into the profit of trade-book publishers, even though academic publishers depend on libraries, and the owners of virtual worlds have no incentive to give up their prop-

Rumilisoun lecturing you at Elrond’s Library in Lord of the Rings Online.

 

erty rights. Indeed, allowing a nonprofit organization to operate virtual worlds would compete directly with their commercial counterparts.

Transferring virtual worlds to a digital library would entail some cost, in part because they differ so much from one another and need maintenance, and in part because some changes would be needed to make them maximally valuable for researchers, teachers, and students. On the client side, a virtual world consists of a user interface plus graphics files, and on the server side of network-management software and an immense database that reliably describes the moment-by-moment condition of thousands of avatars. Without both sides of the Internet connection and without at least a few hundred inhabitants, a virtual world cannot exist.

Consider the world inhabited by my friend Edmund Bainbridge. Born in New Jersey in 1702, he voyaged at age 18 to the Caribbean for adventure and to try his hand as an English freetrader and shipbuilder in Pirates of the Burning Sea ( http://www.burningsea.com). He had a marvelous time sailing across a realistic sea in a variety of authentic sailing ships, blasting away with his canon at the French, Spanish, and occasional pirate. He set up timber mills in two forests, one for oak for the hulls of his ships, the other for fir for their masts, operated a sulfur mine because that ingredient for caulking was not available in the auction system, and is able to construct many different craft in his shipyard. He enjoys the cultural life of the most advanced ports, including the recent musical [ContinUed on p. 127]