"the feelies"
from Brave New World, chapter 11:
The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER . AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT. "Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair," whispered Lenina. "Otherwise you won't get any of the feely effects." The Savage did as he was told. Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another's arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female. The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove cooed "Oo-ooh"; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African bass made answer: "Aa-aah." "Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!" the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. "Ooh …" The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Oohs and Aahs (a duet having been sung and a little love made on that famous bearskin, every hair of which–the Assistant Predestinator was perfectly right–could be separately and distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus of ow's and aie's went up from the audience."
From the
"Miranda 2.0" hypertext of Huxley's
Brave New World.
Virtual Realities like Second Life have developed sophisticated visuals and a variety of audio effects from ambient background sounds to site-thematic music, but tactile and olfactory effects for VR have yet to be sufficiently developed for widespread use. Though SL and other VR programs do not have the level of sensory sophistication of "the feelies" described in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, neither are they designed for the same purpose.
The feelies are a multi-sensory, sensational and simple narrative meant as an entertaining distraction for the genetically designed, heavily conditioned consumer workforce that is strictly divided by caste, completely incurious and uncreative. Huxley opens the novel with a group of Alphas, the management caste, brainlessly copying everything they are told - and it never occurs to them to ask any questions.
Second Life particularly contrasts with Brave New World and the feelies because SL not only offers a vast array of character and participatory choices, but it demands thoughtful creative participation of its viewer/users. So, if or when the tactile and olfactory features of Huxley's feelies become available to SL users, we'll at least be able to compose the story and its sensory input ourselves. Additionally avatar-educators, like Professor Ignatius Onomatopoea, are actively deploying Second Life in university classrooms with good results. As forecast by the 2008 Horizon Report by EDUCAUSE, such pedagogical uses of virtual worlds will be widespread on campuses within a few years.
Recently Beeble briefly attended an 'in-world' SL conference sponsored by Educause and led by the Lindens at the Annenburg Arena at USC: "Hot Topics Discussion on Virtual Worlds". Iggy was helping out at the conference as over 100 professional educators met to discuss ways to use SL in education and to question the Lindens about upcoming possibilities. Since the moderators were going to be the only ones using voice, Iggy's job was to coach attendees how to engage without voice to prevent acoustic overload.
Though the invitations that were sent out suggested professional dress for avatars, there were many strange creatures in the arena, not the least of which was Pathfinder Linden complete with spiky black wings and a tall green hat.
To grab for my few seconds of celebrity, I bumbled up on stage to stand behind Iggy
for a snapshot, and not long after he heard someone asking about the unauthorized avatar on the stage - good thing I wasn't in my original 'fuzzy' outfit!
(the tan man is super-suave digi-celebrity Ignatius Onomatopoea - I'm the pale dork behind him)
i was recently interviewed by my UR colleague Ignatius Onomatopoea for his Second Life Blog "In A Strange Land" for the Richmond Times Dispatch, and though half the interview involved me falling into the ocean, stumbling around and sitting in Iggy's lap we exchanged some good conversation. i was experiencing all the accidental bumblings of someone just getting used to digital disembodiment. In RL, i practically never stumble around, fall into the ocean or sit in Iggy's lap!
(and i have to confess that i've been *so* engaged with my RL and my bio-embodiment, i haven't been spending the SL time necessary to evolve beyond my avatar's awkward adolesence)
So, once I settled on a spot that was at least within typing/talking distance, Iggy and I had an enjoyable conversation - my longest in SL so far, and certainly the most coherent. Iggy set me at ease by removing his head to reveal the blinding white putty-man head beneath. Fortunately for me, he softened the glare and the contrast by putting his shades back on.
Here's what he looked like before he removed his head:
The characteristic "air-typing" motions of SL avatars is an interesting aspect of communication here and I am wondering what changes will come when the Lindens offer voice capability. During the interview, our cadence of synchronously typed & read conversation was an odd one, often resulting in Iggy asking a question while I was typing an unrelated comment, making me appear inattentive. Because we have no established protocol (or maybe SL does? have to check...) for effective SL keyboarded conversation we haven't learned how to work out this awkard cadence.
Of course, all my considerations of conversational cadence evaporated when, to set me at ease, Iggy removed his head revealing the bright white generic 'putty-head' beneath. i had accidentally discovered earlier during my encounter with the trick party hat - Iggy was like a bleached-out member of the Blue Man Group!
Fortunately, he donned some shades that lessened the glare a bit, and this made him a more appealing interviewer.
(note the ocean into which i fell behind us)
During our conversation, Iggy asks about the potential future of SL...what is it becoming, what can it become?
I was reminded of UCLA English professor N. Katharine Hayles whose August 2006 Critical Inquiry essay "Traumas of Code" suggests that computer code is quickly becoming analogous to the human unconscious:
"code is the unconscious of language...
Since large programs - say, Microsoft Word- are written by many programmers, and portions of the code are recycled from one version to the next, no living person understands the programs in their totality. (italics mine)." (137)
The words we see on a computer screen, or in a digital document, are the result of a dense web of sub-codes that is beyond the comprehension of most capable computer users. And now that machines are writing the code, it is not only beyond our ken, it is no longer fully human expression. What might be the vast density of the SL unconscious?
I think what I appreciate most about Hayles' work is that she evokes a vision of the 'cyborg' that does not automatically denigrate, dismiss or replace the body but rather celebrates its primacy as a self-augmenting biological entity. Citing Nigel Thrift's perspective that "cognition as something that, far from being limited to the neo-cortex, occurs throughout the body and stretches beyond body boundaries into the environment." Hayles develops this idea by noting that this embodied cognition can be extended or 'augmented' (Englebart) by humans "enrolling objects into their extended cognitive systems"(139), something we've been doing this ever since the inventions of fire and language. This view situates our bodies at the center of importance as our primary tools for knowledge - not our machines.
This is the more theoretical aspect of my choice of the animal avatar - guess you can tell i'm the "T-head" in this collaboration.
(that's "Theory head" wise guy!)
But, Iggy's chief concern about SL is in regard to our students who are increasingly interacting in digital spaces rather than face to face on Facebook, cell phones, email or other medium. Where will this lead us as a social species? Our observations are preliminary, but we both agree that students seem to lose some of their face-to-face (f2f) social skills and as a result find digital interaction more comfortable.
Of course, that could just be our mutually apocalyptic perspective - the fact remains that, outside of academics, the big draws of the college experience still involve altering brain chemistry and pursuing intimate physical contact with appealing partners - and many of our students haven't even heard of Second Life.
Yet.
I've been learning about SL with my pal Ignatius Onomatopoea who now has his own 'real world' blog called "In A Strange Land" where his avatar goes by the name "Joe Essid". Wait a minute...which is the avatar and which is the original?
Hmmm.
I visited Ignatius' blog and posted a question about whether Baudrillard's death had been simulated...or if he had created an avatar in SL before he died, could/would it live on in cyberspace?
This reminds me of the 1998 Dennis Danvers novel Circuit of Heaven where the invention of a vast silicon storage location called "the bin" began a trend of people 'downloading' themselves (memories, personality) into the bin and then sending their bodies...by the trainload to the crematorium. And this digital mania is not far from some of the hopes & claims of the digital hypesters so ready to disparage and dump the body.
In the bin, life is clean, smooth, safe, sanitary and eternal....the bin replicates itself, so there are multiple copies of you out there...but eventually people begin to miss having a body, they long for the chaos of biology, the joys and pains of embodiment. Eventually the limits of the program become evident and the inhabitants of the bin miss the unlimited potentialities of the bodies they cremated.
Some miss embodiment so much that they choose to download into other people's bodies who are just coming into the bin! What would you call that?!
It wouldn't be exactly trans-gender...but I guess it could be! Trans...organism?
