Virtual Terror
Some time ago it became apparant that terrorist were using virtual worlds, and especially Second Life for training purposes. Since Second Life (SL) uses almost the same laws of physics they could probably train how to fly an aircraft into a building, for example. Another thing that could happen, since anything is possible in SL, is to create an explosive device in any form (car, bouquet of flowers, bench, gift etc.) to see how other objects are affected by the blast. Are these things we should be worried about?
Yes we should
In a sense, we should be afraid of these things. The more real the virtual world gets, the better it can serve as a trainingground for terrorists. In this sense we should be afraid. Terrorist could closely study the effects of bombs, attacks using vehicles,
No we shouldn’t
Why should we be afraid of this? Virtual worlds may prove to be a trainingground, they may not, we don’t exactly know. Since there isn’t any actual danger to human lives I don’t consider the threat to be that large. The fact that there aren’t human lives involved doesn’t exclude it from being terrorism, but the damage will probably be less when a virtual carbomb goes off than when an actual one does.
When is someting qualified as terrorism?
Another problem we are faced with is the question: what is terrorism? If a user in SL destroys someone elses property this doesn’t immediately qualify as terrorism. In my opinion it qualifies if users in the virtual world are scared. That is the goal of terrorism most of the time: to break the enemies will to fight. This is usually done by acts of extremely violence. When you lose something in a virtual world, do you actually get scared? Can terrorism even have the desired effect in a virtual world?
Who are the terrorists?
The next dilemma is the question who the terrorists are. It can be actual terrorists who are training in virtual worlds, or it can be persons who would never commit such an act in real life. Virtual Worlds originated from games, and games are traditionally used to entertain. Someone might find it entertaining to detonate a bomb in a virtual world for some strange reason.
It may also very well be that committing acts of terrorism in a virtual world prevent the user from actually committing them. This is basically the same discussion about whether shooting-games make people more violent, or whether the serve to prevent people from actually shooting persons in real life. To my knowlegde no research has been carried out in this field yet.
Conclusion
Is terrorism likely to happen in a virtual world? Well, that depends on your definition. It could happen, and virtual property could be destroyed or the virtual world could be used as a training ground. These are factors which could make terrorism in a virtual world viable. On the other hand, it’s just a game. Some people may not see it as such, but Virtual Worlds are still mostly to have fun. If people can blow off some steam by committing acts of terrorism instead of letting them do that in the real world, then I’d rather have them do it online where no one is actually physically hurt.
Interesting links:
All Academic – How terrorist use the virtual world
