The Seattleites who dug deep in their pockets to try out Virtual reality at the Video Tech Pavilion during Bumbershoot ‘92 walked away reeling from the imaginative, futuristic possibilities of the technology. In fact, the experience of dipping one’s senses into a three-dimensional computer graphics world had already found an appeal within the radical-chic cyberculture led by ’60s icon Timothy Leary. Well-documented by the magazine Mondo 2000, this movement has added more than its share of hype to the technology.

The organizers of last year’s Second Industry Symposium on Virtual World Technology set out to direct research in and development of VR into a real engineering exercise, with no trace of Leary’s new-age pseudo-science or speculative metaphysics. They were not terribly successful.

Hosted by the University of Washington’s cutting-edge Human Interface Technology (HIT) Lab, the symposium was well-attended by the sort of participants who have already coined a more respectable phrase, “Virtual Environments,” in an attempt to erase the field’s lingering video-game reputation.

The HIT Lab’s goal—to accord VR some measure of hard-science authenticity and explore its practical market potential—is anything but easy. (Just ask anyone who has donned the specially designed headgear and disappeared into a 3D fantasy world manipulated by their own head movements and handheld controls.) To that end, the speakers at the symposium were a rather bland mix of computer-industry executives and technology policy experts. They energetically steered breaktime conversations toward the HIT Lab’s master project of a projected $1 billion a week VR industry, to be centered in Seattle by the turn of the century.

But the HIT Lab didn’t get far in its efforts to discourage hype and fantasy. The star speaker was Frank Ogden, a spunky 71-year-old futurist, former hallucinogenics experimentee, and self-acknowledged cyborg. Ogden’s rambling talk about future technologies sounded just like the kind of speculation the HIT Lab was trying to avoid.

Things got more fun, and less businesslike from there, as the work done by a band of 59 Seattle-area kids hijacked the show. Last summer the HIT Lab served as a classroom for the Pacific Science Center’s Creative Technology Camp. The campers, ages 8 to 18, were given the opportunity to build their own set of virtual worlds, which ranged from a “Peaceful Rain Forest” full of lush green plants and wildlife to “Spike World,” which was designed to evoke emotions of intense fear, to “Inca World,” complete with a sacrificial virgin.

Along with the kids’ creative offerings, the HIT Lab’s own showpiece demo, which allows two participants to play catch together, actually served as a major distraction from the symposium’s buttoned-up manner. That demo, in particular, raises provocative and somewhat troubling aspects of virtual reality. In the lab’s virtual world, each player first selects the graphical representation of their “virtual body” from a palette of body parts. While the very idea of building a custom body is compelling, the act of reconfiguring how we appear to others brings up hotly contested issues of body, gender, and racial politics.

These issues make some VR-watchers fearful that participants choosing to immerse themselves in virtual landscapes as Arnold Schwarzenegger or the Supermodel of the Year may be increasingly less prepared to accept themselves and their bodies as they really are. Remember, too, if the VR industry even begins to approach the commercial levels hinted at by the HIT Lab’s future plans, it’s not unreasonable to imagine a staggering number of adults and children able to spend time in virtual worlds.

What has been lacking from the VR discussion, as is the case with most technologies, is any real sense of awareness by the developers of the ways in which their new world can change human lives and influence thinking—particularly among young users. Not surprisingly, the symposium only trumpeted the positive aspects of VR and did not consider any of the tricky social repercussions.

It’s probably too much to ask that the creators of such remarkable technology can also assume the responsibility for its social implications. In my mind, the users of VR—whether young students creating fantasy playgrounds or businesses planning futuristic developments—should, from the start, be urged to respect the power of this technology. And after the symposium, I find I am more firmly convinced that Leary’s mondo cyberpunk whimsy should not be discouraged---even from the hard-core engineering efforts. The playfulness suggested by the HIT Lab’s VR demonstration combined with Leary’s intrepid cyberpunk code, “Think For Yourself, Question Authority,” may be just the right mix of ingredients for such a provocative and creative medium.