US Air Force to Assign Second Life Avatars to New Recruits

National Defense magazine's cover story is about a new effort by the US Air Force to assign Second Life avatars to all new recruits:

“Everyone who comes into the Air Force will be given an avatar, and that avatar travels with them, grows with them, changes appearance with them,” said Larry Clemons, of the Air Education and Training Command. “It will provide them a history of where they’ve been and a notion of where they’re going.”

This is a fascinating development. It demonstrates a fundamental understanding of the shift that is going on in the digital culture. On one level it illustrates that new recruits will already be familiar and expecting to learn from immersive experiences. On the other hand it demonstrates an understanding in the value that people place in digital experiences.

These avatars would follow airmen through their entire careers, earning promotions and educational credits and even moving with them to new offices and bases.

This is also an indicator of a more nuanced point: Digital experiences are real. People invest in avatars and digital experiences as they would physical objects (for more on this, see Rita J. King's essay, "Art, Reality and Cultural Diplomacy"). But they also emulate their avatars experiences. To provide an avatar throughout one's career provides a second track of incentives: Recruits will be motivated to do things to develop both their physical self and their virtual identity. A prescient move on the part of the Air Force.

In DIP's 2009 report, "Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds," (Carnegie Council) we recommended non-military foreign service agencies consider similar in-depth use of virtual worlds.

[Airmen to Live out their Careers in Cyberspace]