PseudorealityPrevails

Old-Skool Social Networking

Ham radio and CB radio were both early forms of "social networking" technology.  In both cases the idea that "we" could talk to "each other," without mediation by the powers-that-be, was inclusive and exciting.  But despite a vibrant subculture for each, neither caught on in the larger population to the extent that Facebook and Twitter have.

I think Ham and CB were held back by their reliance on speaking rather than writing: you talk, and are listened to, now, in the present.  And while immediacy brings more reality to a connection, it also carries with it a lot of pressure.  What if you don't have something to say right this minute?  What if you don't feel clever, or if you speak slowly, or struggle with getting your thoughts in order?  Too bad, time's up!  So the reaction is to avoid it until you do have something to say.  But, since topics in the medium are often provoked by participation in the medium, non-participation cuts you off from the flow of the space. And then avoidance becomes the default and the radio is parked, unused, on top of the fridge or down in the basement.

Current forms of social networking are asynchronous and written, and I think this is key to their success.  Facebook, Twitter, texting and other SN technologies are all typing.  They are posted when you are satisfied with your phrasing, and they are read by others at their leisure, some time later. Performance anxiety is lessened enough by this so that people find all sorts of things to say, and even clever ways to say them.  And the more they participate, the more they have to talk about, as the conversations gain momentum.  The asynchronous buffer is so powerful that people even shrink it to so-called "real-time," typed chats.  But significantly these are still typed, and they are still asynchronous, even if fast; they're not really real-time in the sense that spoken conversation is.  You may have an exchange with others where the responses are separated by only a few seconds; you may go right up to the real event horizon, but you don't cross the written boundary.

Until you decide to stop social networking for the moment and attempt to be actually social.  But that's a different technology entirely.

Intangible Method (a digital fairy tale)

by Scotto Moore:

A multimedia performance/investigation into the strange phenomenon of a woman discovering that all her activities are posted online, just moments *before they happen . . .

LINK: Scotto's web

IMing in Public

I've noticed, when talking to my 20- and 30-something friends, a distinct lack of segues.  Conversations will veer at sharp angles into the very middle of topics that really do need introduction, and then jump out again just as fast, perhaps circling back around intermittently, perhaps not.  A consistency of abruptness. 

And yet, all this veering and jumping does not break the conversational flow.  The continuity is maintained by the fact that they're still talking to you; in other words, still in the same chat window.  Not only lateral discontinuities, but vertical as well.  And yet, not discontinuities at all.  We're all united in the gap.  At least, they are.

"Dear John" letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

We need to talk.

I am breaking up with you.  Things just aren't working out.  I don't like who I am when I am with you; unfortunately, you bring out the worst in me.  You do have some good features, it's true.  But we are going in different directions. 

I could say that it's not you, it's me, but it is you, too.  You definitely have some problems, I hope you get some help.

I know breaking up by blog is lame, but I need to communicate with you in a way you understand.  I would say that I wish you the best, but I am not entirely sure that I do, so I will not say it. 

I took all my stuff back; I deleted your photos and erased all your messages.  Please do not try to contact me again. 

Sincerely,
My Avatar

The Red Men

In The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua, a British company that creates custom avatars for the wealthy decides to create a custom town to study perfect marketing opportunities.  By interviewing the citizens of a real town in depth, and uploading all the data into the virtual world, the company hopes to virtualize not only the people themselves, but their behavior in large, complex and fluid social groupings.  Once the virtual town goes online, metrics gathered there will so closely mirror consumer interactions in the real world, that the data generated can be used to better sell: widgets, ideas, subscriptions, statis.

In the book, the project collapses in part due to the difficulty of interviewing and surveilling the citizens; it is too labor- and psychologically-intensive.  In RL, of course, we now do this better.  We outsource the data gathering to the objects of study themselves, and have them upload all their information themselves.  Facebook, Threadless, Second Life - all assign the content generation to the end user, which saves time and increases accuracy.  Plus, they want to: it's fun to make yourself Almost Famous for 15 minutes.

This is not necessarily a dystopian tendency, although it could be.  Outsourcing to the end user can be a bloodless way of describing a democratic approach to creativity, enabled by technology.  But it can also lead to a creative cul de sac where every action and hope is measured and met by someone selling you something somewhere.

Coke or Pepsi?

The bulk of this conference focuses on pre-built and pre-scripted virtual worlds.  The illusion of choice is presented by quantity; here are 19 different shirts for your avatar, here is a game where you collect virtual pets, here is a puzzle with 11 branching pathways. 

But not only is customization not true creativity, it actively diverts it, in the same way that junk food fills you up but provides no nutrients.  A type of choice is involved in selecting skin tones and hairstyles from a menu, but as a closed system it is not creative at all.  It is also perfect for the commodification of those impulses, as finite systems have closely defined elements that can be (and are) packaged and sold.  This environment of faux choice is further compounded by the fact that we live in a culture of commodification anyway, from objects to ideas, and so we're familiar with that context and easily fall into the usual behavior patterns. 

This qualitative difference, between customization and creativity, is where the tech can really be used for good or evil.

"Steppenwolf Presents:"

I, or, rather, "I," have two Facebook accounts, both as Second Life avatars.  One is my "real" avatar, the one I use for work, SL building and design, presentations, tutoring, etc.  The other is a "fake" avatar, a group account owned in triplicate by several of us on the project (but mainly inhabited by me) for the purposes of constructing a Cautionary Tale for today's digital generation of transparentists, so they can start to think about how posting the minutia of their social life online might adversely affect them later, in their job searches and workplaces.

I initially joined Facebook only for work, because we were evaluating new technologies such as social networking, and I needed to have some experience with the interface if I might be called upon to design or adapt one.  I used my avatar name and screenshot for the profile photo because I (as the "real" me) have a strong digital presence anyway; if you Google me my portfolio and my articles come up; I'm "found" often enough, I don't think I need to make it easier.  But as I use Facebook more, the account, safely behind the screen of the avatar, is becoming less formal and more playful, more like "me," I suppose, although not fully.  I added a little blogging app to post comments and thoughts on the digital landscape to my friends at work.

The second account profiles a different person, a late-20s extravert, partying her way through her MBA in Marketing.  She's posting all sorts of personal details and photos about her and her friends, adding cute little third-party apps like Beer Pong and Party Space, and generally acting her age.  Which is interesting because it's certainly not how I acted in my late 20s, as I was Very Serious back then, first about Saving the World, and then about Art.  I did have my share of exploits but unless I dig out my old diaries [shudder], the world is not going to know, or care.  Anyway, this second avatar is prettier, dresses much more provocatively, goes clubbing and to social events, and is definitely looking to be out there and connect.  All in Second Life, of course.  On Facebook she sends cute notes back and forth, posts photos, and has lots of digital "friends," because the more the merrier, right? 

So the other night I had to take the second avatar out clubbing to get more photos to post on her Facebook account.  Which entailed some shopping in SL, and then pulling myself away from the things I actually wanted to check out in-world (streaming folk performances, country singer-songwriters, various digital cafes), and over to dance clubs and meet 'n' greet spaces instead.  But while I was grabbing the screenshots I needed, what started to happen is that one avatar got jealous of the other.  And then vice versa. 

The first avatar wanted the cool outfits of the second one, and also the dance animations, so I had to log out and go back in as "me" and get them for her, I mean me, and then teleport to some of the party places so I could see and be seen there, just like the second one was.  Not that I talked to anyone either time, but still.  And now the first one wants to post the better snapshots to her profile, I mean my profile.  But even though I have a more relaxed attitude towards Facebook now, I am not sure exactly how much of "me" I really want up there. 

Then, the second avatar decided that she wanted to be taken seriously and wanted to start a blog and make insightful comments on her experiences like the first one does.  And she wanted to start messaging my friends, but as me, not as her!  So far I haven't let her do that, she has to message people as "her," and I won't let her do too much of that anyway, because they're my friends after all.

Neither of these avatars are fully formed aspects of my personality.  Both have significant false elements, and one would certainly need more than two avatars anyway if we're talking about all the facets of someone's personality, which in addition to being large and numerous, is fluid and not easy to stabilize within subsets of finite components.  Nevertheless, both avatars each have at least some aspects of "me," and some aspects of public faces I have presented at various times and in various places.  Not perhaps the most interesting aspects, but still, I can own up to the parts that are there.

So that's when I realized that I am actually the Steppenwolf (as are we all, according to Hesse).  And these avatars are at play in the Magic Theater, where we anthropomorphize our psychological contents, and externalize our personal fragments, to try out various scenarios as we act our way hopefully out of neurosis and towards health, ideally into the creative and progressive ferment that fully realized social entities can foment.  "Try out this social group, try acting this way."  "Nope, that didn't work, try again with a different approach, and in pursuit of a different goal."  We're doing this in our heads constantly, but we're manifesting and projecting the contents onto real Others and external RL situations, concurrently with the internal dramatic experiments.

And with Second Life being such an easy fit for an overactive introverted imagination, this tendency is augmented in the virtual space.  It is disconcerting and even a little destabilizing to see psychological fragments, part real, part fictional, literally running around in digital bodies in their own virtual worlds.  But, perhaps in this way they are made more overt and conscious.  Which, since conscious things lend themselves more readily to analysis, might be a good thing?

Or maybe I'll just close out all the accounts.

Now with Extra Introversion

I was thinking SL is for extraverts, with its 3D chatroom aspects, virtual clubbing, and other, well, social activities.  Because what else is there to do in there, except fly around and look at stuff?  The repetitive visual fatigue of the new gets old pretty quickly.  Of course you can build, which treats SL as another media to work with, like paint or textiles.  But for the regular user, SL means socializing, chatting, connecting.  If you're an extravert, that's meat and potatoes - the more new people, the more energy!  But if you're an introvert, it's exhausting and annoying, worse even than a cocktail party where you know no one.  So you log out.

But then I had to take my other avatar, the one that is not "me," clubbing, to get some relevant photos for her Facebook page.  She's the Cautionary Tale, albeit a fairly mild one.  So she had to get dressed in her digital Burning Man finest and troll for events, live music and DJs.  I bought her a series of dance animations, one of which, disconcertingly enough, looked pretty much like how I dance in RL.  At first we went to live folk and country streams, in digital cafes and beaches, until she got pretty frustrated with it.  Steve Forbert covers, but they couldn't remember all the verses!  A song with a chorus, "she thinks my tractor is sexy" (which I do not think was in iambic pentameter).  And Sea chanteys.  Twice!  Of course I love this stuff.  But she didn't.

So then we had to go to actual clubs, with LED floors and stripper poles and particle effects.  80s night, samba, classic rock, Goa trance.  And lots of other avatars. 

So I set her to dancing and let the audio stream, and I realized - SL is perfect for introverts.  Dangerously so.

I was caught up in the dancing, not noticing the time going by, listening to the music and watching the particles and other avatars, and dancing around my living room, just a little, and I realized that SL just contributes more material to the already probably over-rich imaginal landscape where introverts live and thrive - in their own heads.  I was having a relatively fun evening, when what I was actually doing was sitting on a folding chair at the computer in an empty apartment that would look exactly like the office if it had any furniture in it at all.  I was also drinking absinthe, which helped.  But "the green" is about sharing, and I was by myself.  I wasn't even having the avatar talk to people digitally, just dancing weird by herself, like I always do.

I am resident in the castle of Beauty's "Beast," imprisoned there no less than he by an absent fairy who tells tales more compelling than reality.  The more fantastical and elaborate the elements of the dreamscape, the more enticing and imprisoning it all is.  The only way out is true connection, true love, just like in the fairy tale, tales which entwine hard truths in their storytelling webs.  But truth has to break in, or out.  Breaking hurts, even if it's to reset something correctly.  I'm not making (nor looking to make) any true connections in SL, nor is any other introvert.  I'm just putting angels in the architecture.  And they didn't fall down to Earth for that.

Ghost in the Machinema

Two recent entries of note, both Shakespeare.  One, scenes from Act I of Hamlet, with photomapped avatars in the Second Life Globe Theater.  This performance was supposed to be experienced in-world, which I missed, but will catch the next one when they're finished voice-casting and animating Act II.  The machinema was a screen capture uploaded to the companion website, edited of course with the requisite film tropes of cuts, pans, and zooms, although it could have used more of those.  Most of it was left straight on, as if the novelty of avatars acting was enough to watch through the very solid and very rectilinear fourth wall. 

The Uncanny Valley was much in evidence with these extended close-ups.   The eyes - much too big for the faces, almost to the sides of the head like killdeer, probably in an attempt to recognize the eyetracking fact that we look at anthropomorphic images the most, and within them faces, and within faces, eyes.  But these eyes did not move or emote, so the effect was oddly taxidermic.  And the movement - the other elements were completely stationary while the mouths moved.  The hair, other body muscles, fabric, and other elements - like the mouths were poking through a hole in one of those panels at the carnival with a painted strongman and bearded lady on the other side of the wood.

The other entry was a montage of scenes from Macbeth on a screen in a banquet hall hosted by NYU.  I think this was a straight-to-machinema production, but not sure.  In any event, in this production in-world editing tools were not only used, but exposed to the video capture, so that the HUDs and arrows and other interface elements were seen in use by the Macbeth characters to manipulate objects and their environment in general (turning it upside down, other transformations).  As if Peter Sellars was forcing Siegfried and Brunnhilde to work the ropes and pulleys of stagecraft while belting out arias, slaying dragons and falling in love.  Exposing the mechanics at the same time as performing the performance alternately undermines and enhances the suspension of disbelief, setting up an oscillation of projection states in the viewer, which they need to navigate as best they can.  This Brechtian focus is, I think, effective, as it gives viewers something else to look at and do and think about other than the fact that the avatars look almost realistic, but not quite.

It is madness, I tell you

Recently discovered an excellent 1936 essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald where he analyzed, in over 6,000 words, his nervous breakdown at age 39.  I have a soft spot for reading about nervous breakdowns, especially when written well: Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Tolstoy.  At first I thought, writers are prone to "the edge," and if they write well they can write about anything well, and it is true that I like the other work by these authors also.

But then I realized that it's more than that.  By analyzing madness, one describes the negative space of sanity, thus describing its outline with greater precision than can be done while one is safely ensconced within.