Sex/Love/Money- SL Style

I have been a lil delinquent on recording SL exploration so I’m gonna cover two adventures in one shot here. As I said in the beginning, I am taking this ethnography as an opportunity to explore what I believe to be the majority drivers of SL- sexual fantasy and money. I stuck love in the title as either (1) the illusion of camaraderie that allows these two to operate in the open without much questioning or (2) maybe flip that: money/sex are affected tools of participants to connect in a new space. Not sure I will be able to answer these concerns but let’s give concerted effort.

First time out was more observational- I went to a number of the “XXX” clubs. There are plenty of these- they seem to have divisions between “types” of sex and language. The common strain between them all is that they are all very popular. Packed. The first thing one notices- as the surroundings are loading- is that you bombarded with requests to join the site’s group as well as a ton of advertisements for XXX related activity. As the space becomes clear, there are ads all over the walls. And most likely when it fully loads, you are standing in front of, behind, or on top of avatars that are sexual engaged. My computer is slow so it usually looks like the avatar is thrusting into empty space for 5 seconds- reflective.

As you walk around there are people “fucking” everywhere. Also, others are just walking around with attached genitalia protruding over pants and skirts- or clothes-less. It’s all pretty hilarious. What is particularly striking though is that a number of people watch others. A virtual exhibition/voyeur fest. After speaking to a couple people who were very short with me, I decided to limit this trip to observation. Talking seemed not to be a priority.

So for my next sojourn, I decided to go to a “regular” dance club. I’m a lil suspect of people going to dance virtually- honestly, what’s the draw? Unless… Something else is up. Well in my experience, yes. Almost immediately as I entered the space I was approached by an Asian looking avatar in hot pants and a tube top. She made fun of me for only using standard issue SL clothes. (Before we go on- I say “she” as the avatar was female but being the skeptic that I am about virtual worlds I tend to believe that behind every avatar must be a fat, sweaty Texan sitting in the darkness of his basement.) I asked her to show something cool cause I am a novice. She said I should come her house and she would set me up with some clothes. We teleported there. It was a really nice modern styled apartment. She claimed to be sitting in Bangkok and working on her English through SL. All of our conversations took place via text.

(to be continued)

More posthuman than human-

This article spends a tremendous amount of time defining itself by what it is not. Generally speaking a decent tactic to relate a point by way of distracting the audience- whether in good or bad faith. Hayles may be missing a important point though that we will attempt to examine in a more free form way. Shakespeare was striving for this point, given in a different context, when suggesting that even kings become the food of worms. The equalizer. Or when Freud discusses the human obsession with death as a driving principle of life in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Death, and the self awareness of such, is a primary human driver- to be posthuman is to be dead. Obsolete is a non-issue. And tech mechanisms don’t die in the biological sense. Hayles’s contention strikes as lacking focus in the embodiment of a literary allusion he uses in the opening paragraph of Chapter Eleven: “Humans can either go gently into that good night, joining dinosaurs as a species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a while by becoming machines themseves” (283). This is an appropriation of a Dylan Thomas whose first line reads: 

Do not go gentle into that good night,                                                                                                           Old age should burn and rave at close of day;                                                                                          Rage, rage against the dying of the light 

This poem was written to Thomas’s father upon his deathbed. Hayles is using this allusion to highlight the alarmist nature of the posthuman debate- so to his credit he is not arguing for this view of die or struggle in a more machinated world- but it highlights something that he is missing. He discusses the teleologies, in presentia/in absentia, evolutionary biology etc… but neglects to discuss ontology of tech. Or even a definition of thinking. Which may be the real problem with this conclusion: what is thinking and how does it constitute humanity or loss of said humanity? Being that this discussion is heavily intwined in Western philosophy it seems apt to consider tech in light of the Cartesian argument. “I think therefore I am” was not just an assertive statement on existence but rather the end of a proof that god must be a just god… which allows man to trust his/her perceptions. Can tech refer to man-as-creator as good or evil? If it has some form of consciousness that supplants mans how does it trust its own perception? It doesn’t- it’s a code. Tech no more supplants human as human than a car/bike/roller blades subsides human as human (legs at least). Society’s ignorance of the effect tech is having is the problem not tech’s supplanting power. This is a lil stattered- making any sense?

Since I’ve already started with foundations…

I decided to take a look at the preliminary concepts utilized by Horst and Miller to build a framework for the study The Cell Phone. I seem to have forgotten what the desired format is for these responses so I’m just gonna roll academic.

CHATTING UP BABYLON:

The dialectical strengths and weaknesses of the frame in The Cell Phone by Horst and Miller

In The Cell Phone, Heather Horst and Daniel Miller embark on the honorable task of categorizing the influence of cell phone technology on Jamaica’s citizenry- most notably the lower economic classes. What we are going to examine here are the presumptions of the authors when engaging their theoretical topic- the “anthropology of communication.” (6) Horst and Miller identify a dialectic between local/global language that will be exacerbated by mobility communication. They offer these at the beginning to give us guidelines for their process. What we are not going to do is entertain why they are there (British funded study) or the explicit empirical interest in Jamaica (rapid and ubiquitous rise in connectivity). For our purposes the former colonial financier and the economic/statistical considerations are benign. We will briefly summarize, than examine the validity of, Horst and Miller’s 3 main foundations: (1) The Cell Phone, (2) Communication in Jamaica, and (3) Orality, Performance, Noise, and Other Callings. The Cell Phone hopes to decipher whether mobile communication encourages socio-economic flattening or quickens the pace of class stratification- we will negate the answer and look purely at the process.

The Cell Phone as a concept for Horst and Miller combines two studies for coexistence: (1) Fischer’s notion that “the telephone did not radically alter American ways of life; rather, Americans used it to more vigorously pursue their characteristic ways of life” (or what Miller and Slater call “expansive realization {7}) and (2) what Ling calls “domestication of technologies,” (7) or a kind of benevolent dialectic. On the surface both of the concepts seem fine but each has troubling aspects. Fischer’s rational delivers one way reading, which we cannot examine as we do not have the text but Horst and Miller consider him at his strongest when he “discerns no obvious or major social or psychological impact, and ‘the best estimate is that, on a whole, telephone calling solidified and deepened social relations.” (8) This statement seems to suggest that deepened relations will not have cultural effect (leaving aside what deepened means). While telephone companies advertise bringing people together, it seems that the bringing and the final together is going to change interaction. As an example, American parents can now call their kids everyday from anywhere and talk to them about anything with no time limitation. When my mother went away to school in England (from New Zealand), she got the occasional letter and a yearly phone call at Christmas. The difference has to have an effect on culture. As for domestication of technologies, the term itself infers that tech is somehow wild, hmm? A concern with this notion is, so what? Isn’t any introduction of a foreign body inherently dialectic? Worth intense discussion- but not a framing principle.

Communication in Jamaica is presented as a study of lower class Jamaica’s “complete range of communication media and information flows within a community,” (12) The historical recantation that follows is slightly baffling not only because of the seemingly random use of historical events but also with relation to their current purposes… to be continued

Ex academic speak: I seem to be running out of time so let me summarize the point I was building to. By the author’s own rationale, most of the Communication and Orality parts are moot. They’d like us to consider the mobile phone as an enabler of endemic discourse in Jamaican culture than they regale us with how the cultural developments will be significant shifts for talking points. If mobile communication is just a question of acceleration than… so what? They finally ask for our forgiveness in allowing them to hurry the anthropological process. It all comes round to “what’s the point?” The study, while having many interesting points, has set itself up on an irreconcilable dichotomy.

A Note on Personal Prejudice

Over the last five months I have voiced my concern regarding SL to a number of fellow students. Almost without exception I have been told I don’t get it, am not open minded enough, been chastised, and been straight yelled at with vitriol. Touching… really. So I thought I’d throw my academic concerns about SL out there and see where I have quite obviously gone wrong. Two thoughts first: (1) Didactic argument is odious- meaning I’m way open to criticism and (2) this is not a correlating critique of Mr. Pine. I have no doubt that our teacher does not take the questioning of a medium as personal attack- anymore than students questioning the use of a particular poem or speaker or topic. I just wanna voice it now. But if this need be clear, this is the second class I am taking with him. He’s a smart fellow. That said, I did not enjoy SL as a classroom setting over the summer mostly because of technical problems but also because I enjoy and excel in first hand, experiential learning. There’s more honesty, which brings me to the concerns.

(1) SL life by nature is mediated through false images. You’re not allowed to use your real last name. An avatar allows for creative expression but also total deception. This is not to say that everyone is deceiving you but as an anthropological academic study it is near impossible to tell. There would seem to be a good case for psychological investigation but anthropology relies on the ability to interpret signs. It might be argued that the avatar frees one for more honest expression except that cultural study relies on social interaction within a set social scheme. Sign, signified, constructed bodies. The virtual world adds a barrier to that- if one were investigating a SL anthropology than maybe but to make reflections on the user is total guesswork. Althusser may be useful here with his consideration of ideology: Ideology is a ‘Representation’ of the Imaginary Relationship of Individuals to their Real Conditions of Existence. Or better yet Frederic Jameson’s critique of post-modernism’s, as an agent of capitalism, use of ‘pastiche’ to alienate and segregate us from our cultural inhibitors. Already our understanding, communally and individually, of our existence is mired by illusion- SL becomes an additional barrier. Capital brings me to my next concern:

(2) SL is a playground for the elite. One requires a high powered computer, fast internet connection, and (for the most part) is gonna have education in design/programming or related fields. This makes for a very limited litmus test. Even in the class over the summer, there were a number of people without the tech required. Added to which, SL is a commercial venture. Selling an experience. Creating markets within a market. Economic, like psychological, study is relevant here as RL markets effect SL marketplace. The Economist a couple months back ran an article on how the financial turmoil in the RL had caused some lending institutions/banks to go bust in SL. Rad. The RL did not start (whichever theory you ascribe) on dollars, yen, or rupees like SL. That comes with caveats… you already begin in an almost unrecoverable and flawed position.

I think that’s it for now. Might think of more and will add. As for my study, I’ll be looking at one of the two things I believe the majority of SL is about: money and sexual fantasy.