John Carter McKnight, MIA, JD
Adjunct Professor of Law,
Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
PhD Student,
Human & Social Dimensions of Science & Technology,
Arizona State University

john.mcknight@asu.edu

Second Year Project

For my department's second year project requirement, I am working on a paper, due August 2010, examining the use of political rhetoric surrounding the merger of two online communities, The Confederation of Democratic Simulators and Al Andalus, focsing on conflicts of modernity and post-modernity, deliberative and collaborative democracy, pseudonymity and identity transparency, secular humanism and Islam, and other issues with immediate application to online and offline political behavior generally.

Dissertation Proposal

I am in the early stages of assembling a proposal for my dissertation, “Communities of Constraint,” which will use a multi-disciplinary toolset to examine online communities with highly restrictive governance systems, whose popularity calls for a re-consideration of the myth of the internet as a libertarian frontier. I will be drawing on Science & Technology Studies, law and democratic political theory, theories of learning and discourse, and cyborg feminism in addition to active participant-observer work in select online communities.

Committee: Braden Allenby, Alice Daer, Elisabeth Hayes, Clark Miller (Chair, Department Chair).

Publications & Presentations

Peer-Reviewed Presentation
"<The Devils Made Me Do It> - A Law School Experiment in Online Community Governance"
Games+Learning+Society 6.0
June 2010, Madison WI

Peer-Reviewed Presentation
"Legal Anthropologist of Gor! a methodological conundrum"
Games+Learning+Society 6.0
June 2010, Madison WI

Conference Chair
Panel Moderator: "Governance or Management?", "Virtual Self-Governance"
Governance of Virtual Worlds Conference
March 2010, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and in Second Life ™

Peer-Reviewed Presentation
"<The Devils Made Me Do It> - A Law School Experiment in Online Community Governance"
Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education 2010
March 2010, in Second Life ™

Invited panelist,
“Reality Replacement: 3D for Immersion, Engagement, Retention and Learning"
Virtual Edge Summit 2010
February 2010, Santa Clara, CA

Invited presentation,
”Virtual World Governance”
Smarter Technology Virtual Conference Series
January 2010, in Second Life ™

Scholarship award presentation,
State of Play 2009 Graduate Student Symposium
June 2009, New York, NY

Governance of Virtual Worlds

In Spring 2010 I co-taught LAW 710/EDT 710, co-listed in ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and the Graduate College Department of Education Technology.

Course Description [syllabus]:

Virtual worlds, including massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), used by tens of millions of people worldwide, have given rise to new forms of social, economic and political organization, and present unique challenges in their interaction with current legal, political, economic and cultural institutions. This course will use cross-disciplinary methods to examine community self-governance within virtual worlds, as well as regulation of virtual worlds by businesses and governments worldwide.

The workload and intellectual demands for this course will be substantial. We will usually meet three hours a week in a seminar setting, but may substitute sessions within a virtual environment for some or all of any week’s course time.

While no previous familiarity with virtual worlds or MMOs is required, students must be comfortable with software tools and online discussion.

A significant portion of this course will involve a hands-on experiment in virtual worlds governance. Active participation in the project, or an equivalent, will be essential to success in the course.