Hi - I didn't take this personally and apologies if I responded so
strongly. I'm not sure I know what "real" life is - I don't find "being
online" (the title of one of my books) any more alienating than the
physical world. This is a long complex discussion, entering into
everything from disability to addiction. Certainly what happens online has
repercussions offline - I'm not sure a distinction can be made.
The basic conditions of existence seem also problematic to me; I think the
body is always already inscribed, "cultured," and for that matter -
without hopefully appearing ridiculous - I find that culture is not only
trans-species, but all the way down, at least to protista. In a very real
sense, the virtual online world is an extension of that, and the political
or cultural economy of the online world is fundamentally entangled with
the offline.
I love the idea of a wilderness untouched, without the presence of humans,
a recuperating wilderness, the closing of national parks so that they
might recover the kinds of disturbances that have occurred for centuries -
think of the megafauna that disappeared millennia ago for example. But I
also recognize this isn't going to happen; ecology becomes a combination
of idealism, heuristics, and adjustments, and might just fail as a result.
Further, one might add that any natural area, again, is already inscribed
- territorialized - among species, humans or not.
So this is all tricky and entangled for me.
I'd like to take down SL too of course, if it could immediately recuper-
ate. I don't think that people's usages of the space necessarily imply
enslavement or corporate pawnship - more usually, one or another sort of
extension of daily life. And for me, it's a relatively harmless one - you
rent land, but you also rent an apartment; you buy goods both real and
virtual etc. The danger I think is the far more corrosive effect of spam,
malware, and the like - I fear corporations, but I fear gangsterism even
more, especially gangsterism knocking at my inbox, harddrive, and mbr.
Sorry for meandering here - Alan
On Thu, 8 Oct 2009, mark cooley wrote:
Alan,? I knew this would happen. I was following up with (in a more
abstract sense) two less recognized points that I thought Marc's piece
touched on (I thought). 1. The new attention economy. 2. The threat of
post-human ideology on real life - the question being how much stuff
that happens online makes any positive difference in the real world -
and by "real" I mean one that is not alienated from our very conditions
of existence (I'm talking about basic ecology of course). ?I was not
attacking your practice and not attempting to say that one can't take an
adversarial position while "working for the man." I know very well that
it's possible (though I'd like to see you take down SL entirely). Sorry
if I seemed to be attacking your practice specifically. That's why I
renamed the thread to take Marc's comments in another direction than a
response to your original call for help. My bad. - mark
Oy yoy yoy, in spite of you telling me what I do in SL is labor, it isn't
if anything it's challenging the structure and at times in fact close to
bringing down the sim because of particle streams.?
Or another way to look at it, it's a lot less labor and a lot more thinking
than any other art- form; I work physically harder at music-making (where I'm
feeding the
corporate club-owners) or typing theory (where I'm feeding no one).
I also don't get a sense that you're talking about anything other than a
distant corp - you might want to look at the internal structure of SL
farms for example.
- Alan
On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, mark cooley wrote:
I'm with you Marc. Also though, there should be some recognition here of attention capital. when
we're participating in so-called social networking sites we're in fact providing labor for the
corporations that own the platforms. Simply, it goes like this - some influential economists and
"thinkers" in the 70's were sitting around thinking about the evils of leisure time - if
they could just get people to think of work as leisure then everything would be great - what they
came up with is an idea that if people could be convinced that they were in fact serving themselves
and a "community" while doing labor then they could get a whole lot of people doing their
labor for them at no cost. Web 2.0 is little more than the fulfillment of this dream. In the case
of SL they're actually getting people to pay them for doing their labor. Imagine going back to the
mid 20th century and telling an industrialist that in the future they wouldn't have to build a
factory,
in fact they wouldn't even have to supply the machinery for their workers, and their workers
wouldn't understand themselves as such at all - they'd be happy to make your products (content) for
you because they'd feel like somehow they're serving themselves. They'd see themselves as
"socializing" with "friends" rather than doing what they're doing 9 times out
of 10, sitting alone in front of the computer indulging in their most exhibitionistic fantasies for
an audience that's too busy indulging in their own egos to care.
I think we need more people willing to step out into the real world. It needs
some attention. There are many intelligent minds stuck in the factory who could
do some good out (t)here.
mmm,
I'm not asking for A mono-cultural and isolated thing here, more of a
conscious effort by people to support each other, artists or whatever
those communities may be. I feel that sharing and supporting others is
an honourable thing to do - not for any religious reasons or official
ideology, but because as an individual who respects others (humans), I
want a better world to live in, therefor I must do something of value
and not just care about my own singular entity. I have made the decision
to bypass the 'heroic' stance of genius in order to seek a life beyond
such distractions which really is more about childish fantasies and
top-down control - in so many different ways in our cultures. I know it
sounds corny, but I still believe in things like love and respect, and
other equally silly things - I know some adhere to a post-human agenda
and this is their choice, which is more about nihilism for the self and
ignore others and their very 'real' contextual situations. I am not
asking people to be like me, but I am asking for people to protect their
cultures before it is taken away from them.
Also,
for that matter the fibers this stuff goes out on - it's all
corporate. How we situate ourselves, how we fight abuse, those
are integral to this, but I don't feel withdrawal - which is
only an inauthentic withdrawal (in the Sartrean sense) - is any
sort of answer.
It may all be corporate, but humans are not necessarily corporate
drones, unfortunately many of us are engineered and (de)educated to be,
and this is one of important points here - if we all fall into a fait
accompli, absolutist or even such an emperical state of being of
accepting what we are fed, then the battle will be lost, perhaps it is
already...
I really do not agree that SL is grass roots, although I do agree that
it is populist which is not always a negative factor, such a thing can
change things in our world and make brilliant things happen. SL, is
centralist, successfully exploiting a digitally networked Internet
culture, like google has. It may have been once, not sure though. One
really cannot call it grass roots in respect of its reasons, function
and purpose.
But of course, all that is being discussed here is different reasons for
our existence, ways of being - it all melds together somehow.
wishing you well.
marc
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