Yes, I'm still spending most of my time reading books and wandering through the woods by the James River - what can I say?
My body is drawn to the scents of blossoming milkweed, honeysuckle and wild rose...
What bugs me most about Second Life is that I feel *guilty* for not spending more time "in world" than I do...I guess that's not really SL's problem though is it? Though I'm generally gregarious, in SL I seem to develop some kind of shyness that has kept me from meeting new avatars. And what's up with that??? Can we be proximally gregarious, yet digitally shy?
I've got a little campsite 'classroom' on our island at UR, just behind Boatwright Tower. It's not much, just a tee-pee, a campfire and a few stumps...and most recently I've added some artwork.
I plan to use this space as a classroom for student-avatars next time I use SL in my teaching. The artwork can serve as a research prompt for students (artist, work, era, subject, technique, material) or it could serve as an exercise in visual literacy and considering the meaning inherent in the composition of individual paintings as well as the arrangement of multiple images in a single space.
I taught my first online course this summer, "Literature, Technology & Society" and it was challenging to get students engaged in the course & discussion without ever being in proximity. The original version of the course was going to involve a project in Second Life, but when I discovered the relative technical inexperience of my few students, I decided to save SL for another class.
Though I used Blackboard for most of the course interaction, I had to develop a 'companion website' to contain some of the digital materials for the class including brief audio podcasts about our readings of several novels. To give my students experience in using Web 2.0 tools for developing an 'e-portfolio', final student projects involved creating a blog with several significant entries discussing and connecting our various texts from the course, both typographic and visual.
Ironically, the best blog of the class was created by a student who called herself "the Luddite".
Here I am at Danish Visions, an educational island I've discussed before, designed by Tonny Halderman for his business school. I liked the horse so much that Tonny told me where I could buy one of my own - but now I can't find the horse I bought!
(it's a bit harder to misplace a real horse)
Since the surrender of my vocal virginity, I've made only a few other forays into SL since then and I am surprised at how few avatars seem to be using voice chat. It may be that the technology needs a bit of development or it may be our bandwidth limits, but voice has not been as popular as I had expected it would be.
I am preparing to attend the CCCC Convention with Iggy in New Orleans, LA where we will be presenting some of our research about/in Second Life. During our presentation, we will have our avatars meet on the University of Richmond island along with some of the avatars of students who have done some of this exploration with us.
While Iggy has used SL in his "Literature, Technology & Society" course, I've been using it mostly separate from my courses, instead relying on two groups of independent student researchers: high school seniors who attended University of Richmond's Summer Scholars program and university freshmen and sophomores, My Summer Scholars agreed to interview other avatars about their experiences in SL and their thoughts about its educational potential. My university students are exploring educational sites, testing the offerings, interviewing local avatars and taking a few snapshots.
Students then posts their avatar-findings in our research blog and some join us at the convention on April 2 as avatars in Second Life, on the University of Richmond's island.
the symposium of the future?....
In past postings, I've discussed my avatar friend Pappy Enoch who looks like a black bearded pot-bellied hillbilly in overalls who communicates in what I call a 'bastardized hillbilly dialect' (as if there were an 'official' hillbilly language). Though he looks scary, and though he recently broke out of jail in Tombstone, Pappy is actually quite a southern gentleman and he has attracted a small following.
I've been fascinated and mystified by Pappy's popularity. Pappy's place on Richmond Island looks like an un-mown junk yard with a still, an outhouse and an old truck up on blocks, and as such it seems to run counter to most SL landscapes that are generally clean and orderly. (does a word like 'clean' even apply?) The same seems to be true for most avatars - people generally go for the slick look of 'perfection' even if their costume is bizarre.
My theory is that for most folks, SL is a place to achieve a 'perfection' that we cannot achieve in real life, so we try to design the body image or surroundings that reflect our sense of the ideal, or at least an identity we'd like to try out for a 'test-drive.' Aside from being a vague and variously defined term, 'perfection' is a state that may not be as desirable as we believe - it may not be a worthy goal.
Zamyatin's novel We is an excellent and fascinating exploration of the notion of perfection and other attempts at precise measurement and the world he portrays of individual perfection and uniformity via totally calculated control is at once boring and horrific. So my point about Pappy is that perhaps his minor celebrity is precisely because of his imperfection, not in spite of it.
It may be that, when given the chance to design and interact with the ideal, we find it insufficient and boring and we long for that which lacks such uniformity and transcendence, if unconsciously. It may be that the 'imperfections' we subdue, cover and resist are actually embodied sites of power, delight and wisdom.
The value of imperfect embodiment is explored in Denis Danvers' sci-fi novels The Circuit of Heaven and End of Days as future humans dump their bodies for a chance at immortality and eternal youth inside a digital reproduction of the real world called "the Bin." One of the more chilling scenes in the novel is of the train-carloads of these dumped bodies pulling into the mass incinerators built to dispose of the disparaged flesh. Eventually the perfection and predictability of these realms wears on the residents and they begin to long for their bodies back...
Today I met an SL resident named "Lota" whose avatar was so bulbous that others were asking her if she was pregnant. (what would it mean to be pregnant in SL?) But no, Lota isn't pregnant, she's just FAT - another deliberately designed 'imperfect' avatar.
(this picture doesn't do justice to her wondrously pendulous belly)
Though Lota doesn't have the fans that Pappy does, it was clear that she did have a level of celebrity judging by the comments and interaction of surrounding avatars. The imperfection of the situation was also emphasized by someone 'farting' regularly during our conversation. I never asked, but I don't think it was Lota. Fortunately it was the sound of farting only since SL lacks olfactory cues - so far. (but would we want to add smell? and is farting a kind of griefing?)
So, hats off to Lota and Pappy for leading the revolution of imperfection and thereby celebrating our brilliant and uncontrollable embodiment!
They wouldn't let me in the club in my earthy condition, but I was able to get a picture of Pappy's coustin, the Rev. LuciferLee Enoch, as he was practicing on the piano.
It was a classical piece, Bach I believe, but I was surprised to see him play such a peaceful tune after the fire-breathing sermons I've heard him give!
He's Pappy Enoch's cousin and so a member of the Hellbilly community but since the Rev. went to Bible College he lack's Pappy's distinctive backwoods dialect - though a bit of grit slips through now and again!
When I learned he was a Reverend, I was sure he'd think I was some kind of Swamp Demon and try to banish me or exorcize my muck-n-moss, but instead he greeted me like a brother with a big squishy hug.
Now, I'm not an expert on theology but Rev. Enoch says that most church folk got it all wrong, and that Lucifer is the brother of Jesus, not his nemesis! It sounds crazy, I know, but etymologically "lucifer" means "light bringer" or "shining one" and Jesus is called the "light of the world" and was sometimes described as emitting light....hmmmm. Who knows?
Maybe the Devil isn't the bad guy after all?
According to the Rev. Lucifer taught Jesus how to do the wine thing and that Jesus' priorities were evident in his first miracle where he created a huge 30 gallon jug of good wine for a party.
That's one preacher that makes even my muddy mind work overtime!
Huxley would have been fascinated by Second Life, but I'm not sure whether he spend much time there - or maybe he would, but this time he would 'write' Brave New World with SL avatars! I suppose that would have to be a collaborative project, one of the many new possibilities in this realm: the participatory novel with people from all over the world creating avatars for Bernard & Lenina, the Savage and Mustapha Mond.
I've been working on a hypertext of Brave New World, and now I can display its homepage in SL and visitors can link to it and browse - an exciting pedagogical application of this new frontier.
Huxley's novel is now more relevant than ever with advances in genetic engineering, psychiatric drugs and the naturalization of constant consumer conditioning - though his world did not sit under the threat of nuclear war.
Though the phrase "brave new world" was not originally meant as an automatically positive statement, the word 'brave' at the time Shakespeare used it in "The Tempest" meant not only courage, but also showy and both seem to apply to Second Life - and this world is just beginning to unfold....
My first interviews were spontaneous meetings, and therefore somewhat brief and disorganized but good experience nevertheless. When i saw the word "Designer" in the name bubble over Tonny Halderman, i asked a few questions to determine if he was a fashion designer in Real Life or a designer of Second Life. Tonny turned out to be an SL designer who looked like a 20-something blue-eyed, blond young man in SL. Our conversation was short and i was distracted by my attempts to capture the text somehow, but Tonny was the first SL avatar to suggest that Beeble's look might elicit student teasing - but he did not say anything specific about being a furry!
My second chance interview was just before a presentation for my Faith Broek was a svelte, blonde young woman with a flashing halo. She had only been in SL for two weeks and was far more deft than I was. I tried to follow her, sometimes walking, sometimes flying, but often got lost or fell into a pit or the ocean - she had to teleport me several times.
When i asked if her name "Faith Broek" was a pun, she asked "what's a pun?"
At this, i thought that either she was not a native English speaker, or she was very young.
After complimenting my look and giving me a beer, Faith revealed that she was a 16 year old English girl - so can i be arrested for accepting a digital beer from a minor? i hope not, but these days it's hard to tell with all the hysteria over "protecting children" - i doubt Faith considers herself a "child" but that doesn't mean there isn't a whole army of social workers and protection programs who cash in on this inappropriate and inaccurate label.
After falling into numerous pits and bodies of water, having to be teleported to recover from my disorientation, i told Faith i had to go to class and asked if she'd be interested in making a short appearance. She agreed, and I left for class.
I had transported myself to what I thought was a university, but which was crowded with avatars having a blizzard of decidedly un-scholarly conversations. When Faith arrived, we chatted a bit for the class before she judged the location too crowded and asked if we could teleport elsewhere for less distraction. She was able to teleport, but i was not. It may have been the traffic on the university server, or some other glitch, but I was stuck on the crowded, confusing, cacaphonous concourse.
The image to the right was taken during a moment of rest in my bumbling attempt to follow Faith.
(can't you smell the fire and hear it crackle?)
Iggy, my fellow explorer & seasoned SL blogger sent me this interesting quote:
“Nevertheless it will be said that if the body is not a thing, it is a
situation, as viewed in the perspective I am adopting--that of
Heidegger, Sartre, and Merlau-Ponty; it is the instrument of our grasp upon this world, a limiting factor for our projects.” - Simone de Beauvoir
In our excitement about technology and the nifty technotoys we create, we often forget "the instrument of our grasp upon this world" - the human sensorium, our embodiment. Though Beauvoir seems to focus on the limitations of the body, her definition of the body as
"a situation" seems to remind us of its mediation of our experience.
Perhaps it might be more fruitful for us to maximize our familiarity and facility with the instrument of our bodies before we discard them for "better" machine replacements.
Recently i came across an essay by Aldous Huxley where he explains D. H. Lawrence's
defense of animality, or perhaps of an evolved conception of humanity:
“What Lawrence was crusading for was the admission by the conscious spirit of the right of the body and the instincts, not merely to be a begrudged existence, but to an equal honor with itself. Man is an animal that thinks. To be a first-rate human being, a man must be both a first-rate animal and a first-rate thinker. (And, incidentally, he cannot be a first-rate thinker, at any rate about human affairs, unless he is also a first-rate animal.)”
Aldous Huxley “To the Puritan All Things Are Impure”
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?
One of the interesting things that new technologies offer us is a nearly unlimited set of choices, customizations, or options for the visual (and often aural) enhancement of our interface and it is easy to get lost in a wilderness of digital enhancements.
For example, while waiting to observe students from a composition class as they created their first SL avatars, i began to 'edit my own appearance' and accidentally LOST Beeble's animal head! In an effort to don a 'party hat' that I found in my inventory, Beeble's head just popped off and landed on the ground.
i still am not sure how this happened, but i was amused to discover that beneath Beeble's head was the basic 'human' featured head that is part of the basic avatar model. Surely there are some rich metaphorical reflections possible here, especially with my foregrounded emphasis on human biology and animality. Is my sense of animality actually part of my core being, or is it like a hat or head that I 'put on' as in SL?
This makes me think of my current studies of the Don Juan story and how his seductive character is often portrayed as an irresistible force of Nature - the drive of desire. This question brings up the question of his moral responsibility and engages with some of our oldest discussions about what it means to be human and where we are located in the matrix of Nature.
Participation in SL can also lead to discussions about man and Nature, what constitutes human identity and what is significance we experience when we are in personal physical proximity as opposed to distant digital interaction.
In a way, this discussion goes back about 5000 years to the invention of writing. Though Socrates was suspicious of writing technology, preferring to rely on the older technology of the spoken word but if it weren't for Plato's writing, the oral traditions of Socrates might not have survived. Reflection on his response and on the varying values and deficits of each technology (spoken vs. written) can be a very fruitful exercise potentially enhancing our understanding of and appreciation for each technology.
So too, it can be fruitful for us to reflect on these amazing new digital technologies and the ways they enhance our lives as well as the ways in which they are insufficient and sometimes even destructive.
An ongoing and critical engagement with our technologies not only promises new and more useful insights about their best uses, it is essential to maintaining our mastery of our tools and preventing their mastery of us.
As Emerson noted in the midst of the Industrial Revolution:
"Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments."
As we've been getting know SL with our students in classes, some students are coming back with stories of harassment by other avatars.
One student agreed to be 'teleported' to another location when asked by another avatar and the student ended up getting stuck in an S&M club from which she couldn't escape because her avatar was not "authorized" to open the door!
This and other odd encounters (check the SL Police Blotter) have prompted some worthwhile discussion about digital safety issues and what sort of 'protections' and guidelines students should have for this new realm.
Though I have heard of "rape in cyberspace" and I fully acknowledge that some (too many?) men are aggressive, obnoxious pigs, I am not fully convinced that rape is the correct term, or that there are any serious dangers online that can be equated to events in the physical world or what SL & other cybernauts call "RL" for Real Life.
I know this may raise the dander of my feminist friends, but I think that a lack of physical contact is a central consideration here. Perhaps it is a sign of our belief in the digital world and its reality that we are so willing to *equate* what happens online (essentially without our body, and totally without direct physical contact) with what happens in RL.
To say that what someone does to a digital image is the same as doing it to the person who created the image seems an unwarranted conflation of RL & SL. Would ex-lovers then be guilty of assault if they defaced a picture of their ex and then sent it to them? Harassment maybe, but surely not assault. No matter how much we might like to claim so, the digital is *not* the same as the physical world and it never will be.
Nevertheless, digital dangers do exist and caution is certainly warranted - ultimately we cannot know for sure who is at the other keyboard and our belief in their identity is purely an act of faith. With recent evidence of increases in State surveillance, as well as net stalking and identity theft, we should all be well aware that *no* electronic medium is completely private.
Unless a person reveals personal information or foolishly agrees to meet a complete stranger simply based on an avatar and some writing, there is little real danger in cyberspace.
At least that's my reading right here, right now. I'll let you know if I've changed my mind after I get trapped in some digital dive!
It seems that our university house in SL is located between a casino and a strip club. Naturally, I had to peek into the strip club...
Though I didn't see anything I would call "explicit" the walls were covered with images, some of which suggested avatar eroticism (if such a thing is even possible) but most of the spaces on the wall were open for advertising - the most widespread and perhaps the most damaging prostitution of all.
I've toured our house and watched a short video with Al Gore, but I haven't attended or planned any educational activities there yet. If I do, I think I'll want to use the upstairs classroom with all the pillows on the floor!
As long as it took me to learn how to move the throne into position, Beeble was bushed when I was done!
Well, I finally completed my first draft of my avatar Beeble Baxter and I've explored a bit of Second Life but I still have much to learn! If you're new to Second Life (or SL for short) you're probably only slightly less confused than I am. Let me explain what I know...
It's not technically a 'game' because there is no set goal or fixed rules of 'play' but there are rules in Second Life. I guess it's like a huge chunk of cyberspace where we can wander around to see what others are doing and have made. For example, I'm cheifly interested in SL for educational purposes and MIT, Harvard and other schools are already teaching classes here.
The best news is that it's FREE for basic interaction and for those who would like to enhance their SL with 'digital enhancements' there is a wide array of items that can be bought with real money (US dollars) and kept in your avatar file.
Check it out and see what you think...you don't have to make a commitment or enter any personal information. You'll meet people from all over the world who are trying this out and communicating with one another. In fact, I just read that Sweden is opening a 'virtual embassy' in Second Life!!
http://secondlife.com/
More later....
