True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier by Vernor Vinge

Author:Vernor Vinge
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466893191
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Social Dimensions of Habitat’s Citizenry

F. Randall Farmer

I was the Oracle, or system administrator, for Habitat during its shakedown period and paying-pilot test from June 1986 to May 1988. Here are a few observations about the unique social dimensions of online communities. Most of these ideas were composed while I reigned over a small Habitat town named Populopolis, with a population of five hundred citizens. The Oracles of the currently operating Habitats—Club Caribe in the United States, and Fujitsu Habitat in Japan—have contributed much to later refinement of these thoughts.

The Social Commitment Dimension

In Habitat, I observed five distinct patterns of usage and social commitment:

• The Passives

• The Actives

• The Motivators

• The Caretakers

• The Geek Gods

The Passives

The Passive group must be led by the hand to participate. They want effortless entertainment, like a person watching cable TV with a remote control. They constantly flit from place to place, staying in any single spot for only a moment.

Easily seventy-five percent of the players fall into this category, but they account for only perhaps twenty percent of the connect time. They tend to “cross over” into Habitat only to read their mail, collect their daily Tokens, and read the weekly newspaper (and if given the chance to do any of these activities offline, they’ll take it). They show up for events intermittently and only when the mood strikes. Even when they do spend more than two minutes in at a time, they tend to hang around as Ghosts and eavesdrop on others’ conversations, rather than participating in the activities themselves. Many special events and activities had to target these “on for just a few minutes” people, and encourage their active participation.

The Actives

The Active group is the next largest, and make up the bulk of the paying customer hours. The active players typically participate in two to five hours of activities per week each. They tend to put Habitat first in their online agenda. Immediately upon entering they contact the other players online to find out the hot activity of the day. They always have a copy of the latest paper (and gripe if it comes out late).

The Actives’ biggest problem is overspending. They really like Habitat, and lose track of the time they spend in it. This would sometimes lead to Actives canceling their accounts when a huge bill arrived in the mail, a loss for all involved. The watchword for these people is “be thrifty.”

During Fujitsu Habitat’s first year of operations the system was only available from 1:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M. local time. The Actives in Japan developed the habit of logging in every day at 9:00, give or take a minute. This way they maximized their social activity (since they knew everyone else was doing the same thing) but minimized their connection costs (since the system shut down at 11:00). Fujitsu Habitat usually reached peak load by 9:15. Over half these players would still be online at closing, when the host was yanked out from under them. Even now, after two years of twenty-four-hour host operations, this peak persists.

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