Week 13: Living in Virtual Worlds – When Real is Really Real

Looking at Edward Castronova’s “Synthetic Worlds”, this week’s readings take us into the realm of online/offline convergence. The author describes talking to a room of intellectuals, describing the ever-changing world of online “games”. He speaks of his desire for people to “recognize that this video game thing really isn’t kid stuff anymore.” This statement seems to echo the thoughts of many in mainstream news media who spend obnoxious amounts of time dissecting, reviewing, and discussing the next wave of online gaming. This phenomenon is only further motivated by the recent releases of Sony and X-Box’s new next-gen systems.       

 

            One of X-Box 1’s biggest selling points is its ability to seamlessly integrate your television viewing experience into an interactive web-connected display. This shift from a separate experience for two distinct mediums further accentuates Mr. Castronova’s views on an ever-expanding Synthetic World. While Microsoft is trying to integrate two different experiences, a recent phenomenon embodies the idea of synthetic worlds like no other. Minecraft is a virtual sandbox game that allows users to build 3-dimenstional creations in a virtual environment. The trend of seeing more and more virtual worlds pop up across the internet is not one we will likely see come to an end anytime soon. With the ability for users to take these applications on the go via cell phones, tablets, and laptops, I predict we will only see a more realistic future for these sorts of experiences.

            I’m curious to hear Castronova’s thoughts on Google Glass and its ability to interweave a digital overlay onto our offline world. Does he see this as the ultimate synthetic world? Or perhaps this is an evolutionary step into a new, uncharted futuristic type of interblended digital society.

Week 12: Romance & sex online

            The common theme across this week’s readings was the use of online environments as a means for connecting and fostering relationships both offline and online. One of Second Life, and to be fair most online communities, strongest points is in its ability to allow users to formulate and strategically create an online persona. In Second Life, this persona takes the form of an avatar, a virtual visual materialization of the users own perceived or intentionally different view of themselves. Using the creative freedoms allowed by Second Life as a starting point, the author of Sex Lives in Second Life highlights how users can assert themselves in these worlds as they see fit, removing the embodied constraints of the real world. This creative freedoms has the ability to stir emotions and create distrust amongst users; yet some find the ambiguity of it all liberating, and as such find ways to develop strong, and sometimes romantic bonds amongst each other.

 

            It’s easy to see why users spend such large amounts of time and money getting their avatars just right. One walk through a Second Life store will reveal just how sexually charged a lot of avatars outfits appear. Embodying the idea of creative freedoms, Second Life users are gifted with the ability to explore ideas and lifestyles they would most likely avoid in the real world. Brookey and Cannon look at the use of BDSM devices and the submissive nature of female avatars in their adverts. It seems almost painfully obvious that users would find these devices, outfits, and animations intriguing; looking to get away from the real world, adventurous users would feel compelled to experiment and leverage all of Second Life’s creative freedoms.

 

            This week’s readings helped form the questions and ideas I pursued in our final assignment. When looking at the Furry sub-culture, it’s hard not to see the parallels between online sex described in these readings. Users find ways to ‘scratch the itch’ online, finding like-minded individuals to share in their online tirades. 

Week 11: Online economics & work

Week 11: Online economics & work

 

            In a capitalistic society, nothing is safe, not event virtual worlds. It should come as no surprise that, while given freedoms to go ‘against the grain’; the creators of virtual worlds would follow certain guidelines that we find in our offline environments. One such “necessity” is the inclusion and exploitation of online financial constraints. It’s hard to believe the creators of such online worlds such as Everquest and World of Warcraft could have ever predicted the effect and influence these online worlds would have on their bubble economies. 

 

            “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” This was a popular saying of one of my old economics professors, demonstrating his belief that if you wanted something you had to pay for it. In Castronova’s piece, he focuses on Everquest as his predominant research venue. This choice was made for obvious reasons; it had, at the time of writing, the largest most diverse monetary system in place amongst virtual worlds. After reviewing the statistical data accumulated through his research into Everquests’ economic conditions, its interesting to see the use of barter being used to transfer goods and PP.  The fact that users had to take to eBay and such to facilitate these transactions speaks volumes to the breadth of online transactions taking place.

 

            While consciously aware buyers and sellers make up a large part of online marketplaces, the Dibbell article looks to bring attention to the plight of Chinese ‘gold farmers’ who plunder hours forcibly earning virtual money and experience. Only in such an interconnected world could this be a reality; when did online currency become such a powerful force? Who knows what our future holds in term of online currency; just take a look at the success of BitCoin and I think you’ll be able to get a general idea of the world of tomorrow.  

Week 10: Privacy, Disclosure, & Lying

            I know I’m not the only one to remember those early day of online socializing; moving from A/S/L to message boards, communication was suddenly new and exciting again. Flash forward a few years and suddenly our own government is spying us on, facing cyber attacks from overseas radicals, and combating fraud and identity theft on a daily basis. Man, where did that young innocent Internet of my youth go?

            Today we find an online world littered with everything and anything. Remember that picture of you from high school with the six-pack box on your head? Yep, still online; it’s become common knowledge that what goes online stays online, that however wasn’t always the case. In Nussabaum’s piece, she attempts to find the exact moment when adolescents and young adults began opening up to the public eye. She brings up MTV’s Real World as an example of privacy being removed willingly, all in the name of entertainment. I’m of the belief that, while influential in lowering, Real World was less effective in wanting young people to share but instead made them want to become consumed in the media of others. 

            Technology has made sharing life’s moments simple and easy. It has caused there to be a massive influx in content being created and disseminated across the web. What type of world would we have if not for social media or user-generated content? With all of this information exchanging hands online it was only a matter of time before online privacy took center stage in our lives. With the recent revelations regarding the NSA and its worldwide online spying circuit, you would hope people would realize this was a bigger issue than previously feared. 

Avatars and Self-representation

The great separation of interactions that came about with the advent of the telephone, radio, television, and most recently the Internet allowed unimaginable amounts of non-face-to-face communications to occur. This change in the types of communication people pursued necessitated a change in the way we read verbal and non-verbal cues. People couldn’t rely on visual social cues, we became adapt at picking up information through other means.

 

In Goffman’s introduction, he talks about the early moments of an interaction in which we attempt to garner information about the individual we are communicating with. Needless to say in a face-to-face interaction we have the ability to utilize visual stimuli to deduce information about the individual. Visual cues are the most concrete of cues in terms of influencing our views on a person. Appearance and visual cues in an offline environment are first hand indicators, we can see it so we can believe it. When this gets transferred to an online environment, what we see can, and usually is, not an actual representation of the person behind the other screen.

 

One of the key elements of personal representation missing from online interactions is the feeling of visually confirming your internal manifestation of the person you are interacting with. Being able to solidify an idea or representation and have it grounded in fact helps ease tensions or reservations individuals can experience when interacting online. This is one of the things that make online communication and interaction such a major player in the way we communicate. With computers getting cheaper and smaller, and phones in almost a billion pockets it would seem virtual communication is here to stay. 

Week 1 Blog Post

The virtual world we are about to enter, Second Life, offers many different channels of user interaction. This is a vast change from the world of online interactions/communication from our childhood, no longer are we just typing behind a screen now we are engaging face to face and with a much deeper understanding of how ‘real’ these interactions are.

This weeks readings take a look at how online environments have affected our everyday lives, and the different way people utilize them. One of the key points that stood out to me from the “Same shit, different world” piece was the idea of people over sharing in an online environment. Hyper-personal effect is the act of sharing information online that you would not share in a real world situation. The idea that people in an online environment have more time to construct various responses is a clear example of why this is the case.

In Personal connections in the digital age, there is a passage that made me question the actual power online communicating has over individuals. The passage, “People’s real self is expressed best online”, lends credit to my aforementioned hyper-personal effect. If people are adapting to be more welcoming and accepting of online communications, it might be hard to adjust back to a offline world.