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'So, what does that mean?' is what you are
probably thinking.
Let's start with virtual objects. The rock near
the turf building, ferns, snails in the jungle, the appartment manager, fuzzies.
Thes are all virtual objects, things that exist
in our virtual world of Kymer.
Yes, they exist in a place. So do objects in the material world, but unlike the latter,
they have no material being. They are virtual, at bottom just patterns in a
bit-stream that your computer presents to you according to the intentions of
Kymer's programmers.
Yet virtual objects and material objects do have
something in common. We experience them. That is
where phenomenology comes in.
The dictionary defines phenomenology as being the
study of phenomena. Phenomena are things as they appear to our experience. Now, whether you are in a virtual or a material world,
you are experiencing the objects around you -
looking at them, picking them up, or otherwise interacting with them.
Interaction with objects, in any world, depends
on the nature of the object. One factor that is significant in what we
experience when interacting with an object, is the object's degree of autonomy.
Naturally, we interact differently with stones to
how we do with birds or cats. Even more so, we interact differently with stones
to how we do with people.
So autonomy is a dimension along which we can
classify our experience of objects. Interactivity is another.
I intend here, as an experiment, to classify the
objects we find in Kymer according to a two dimensional experiential grid. At
the bottom left of the grid is the humble rock. At the top right is the avatar,
you and me.
What I want you to do, dear reader, is to fill in
the gaps in this phenomenological table of virtual objects, and/or provide
further criteria according to which they can be classified.
Are there currently objects in Kymer that fill
the blank spaces in the table? Or are there possible objects, not yet
implemented, that would do so?
Hmmmm..... now where should Uni's cat go? | 
