Tuesday, November 04, 2003
:: Being of two minds ::
Again, from Dewdney:
Again, from Dewdney:
Rather than being evidence of the breakdwon of logic, or of low-grade hypocrisy, our ability to hold contrary opinions, to be of "two minds", is really a practical solution to the difficulties of dealing with complex environments. It is a mark of our flexibility and evidence of our multiplicity that we accept new ides without evicting our old "tenants".
Whatever identities we play out in our fantasies and regrets...are understudied by our multiple personalities. We tend to invent identities and characters in order to act out a particular narrative, and then, if we take our lives elsewhere, these characters become forgotten identities that we allow to wither. [p. 160]
Whatever identities we play out in our fantasies and regrets...are understudied by our multiple personalities. We tend to invent identities and characters in order to act out a particular narrative, and then, if we take our lives elsewhere, these characters become forgotten identities that we allow to wither. [p. 160]
Monday, November 03, 2003
:: What the....? ::
I've been a Sarah McLachlan fan for years, not rabid or anything, but I've seen her live about a dozen times and have all her albums.
It's been six years since she's released anything new. So it isn't surprising that I would have pre-ordered her new album, "Afterglow" [ flash required to view well ]
It came in the mail today from Indigo and I promptly opened it up, popped it into my PC (I've never bothered to buy a stereo for my office, since I have a high-quality sound card and speakers attached to my computer). I waited for the autorun to activate and for that sweet and haunting voice to emerge.
It didn't happen.
Instead, I was greeted with a screen from something called "Bandlink" that looked like a popup ad. Now, at first, I thought it was because I'd been browsing eBay and Canada.com and had both of these still open in browser windows. I thought perhaps that a popup had made it through my Google toolbar popup suppressor.
Nope. The popup was from Sarah's CD.
Hmmm...
I double-clicked on the E: drive and find it called "Bandlink". No other files apparent on the CD other than this Bandlink.exe thing. Even the CD icon showing for the E: drive is a Bandlink icon, not an icon from Sarah or Nettwerk, her production company, or anything else recognizably Sarah-related.
After 10 minutes of fiddling, I gave up. I could not access Sarah's music if I didn't install this software thingie.
With a big sigh of disgust and resignation, I gave in. I have no other choice -- as I said, I have no stereo up here.
I read the privacy statement and usage agreement for this bandlink thingie, as best I could given the highly jargoned legal language used. I watched the CD "install the software, though in reality it looks like it was downloading the music?!?!
2 minutes later, ahhhhhhh there she was.
But I'm still nonplussed.
What did I just buy? I was under the impression I was buying a CD full of music. I've got to assume there is music on the CD, or else how will I be able to play it in my car on my way to class later?
If so though, why are the music files "invisible" to my PC? Is this Nettwerk's way of circumventing digital appropriation?
The Bandlink site says this of their software. But read the small print at the bottom...i.e.:
So...
Bemused and somewhat unsettled, I sit here, listening to Sarah's sublime voice slide out of my PC's speakers, wondering.
Have I just been greeted with the next one-up strategy of corporate control over culture and popular tactics, with the strategy now disguised as a copyright protection gadget and forced on me against my will?
Sarah isn't sounding quite as sweet today.
I've been a Sarah McLachlan fan for years, not rabid or anything, but I've seen her live about a dozen times and have all her albums.
It's been six years since she's released anything new. So it isn't surprising that I would have pre-ordered her new album, "Afterglow" [ flash required to view well ]
It came in the mail today from Indigo and I promptly opened it up, popped it into my PC (I've never bothered to buy a stereo for my office, since I have a high-quality sound card and speakers attached to my computer). I waited for the autorun to activate and for that sweet and haunting voice to emerge.
It didn't happen.
Instead, I was greeted with a screen from something called "Bandlink" that looked like a popup ad. Now, at first, I thought it was because I'd been browsing eBay and Canada.com and had both of these still open in browser windows. I thought perhaps that a popup had made it through my Google toolbar popup suppressor.
Nope. The popup was from Sarah's CD.
Hmmm...
I double-clicked on the E: drive and find it called "Bandlink". No other files apparent on the CD other than this Bandlink.exe thing. Even the CD icon showing for the E: drive is a Bandlink icon, not an icon from Sarah or Nettwerk, her production company, or anything else recognizably Sarah-related.
After 10 minutes of fiddling, I gave up. I could not access Sarah's music if I didn't install this software thingie.
With a big sigh of disgust and resignation, I gave in. I have no other choice -- as I said, I have no stereo up here.
I read the privacy statement and usage agreement for this bandlink thingie, as best I could given the highly jargoned legal language used. I watched the CD "install the software, though in reality it looks like it was downloading the music?!?!
2 minutes later, ahhhhhhh there she was.
But I'm still nonplussed.
What did I just buy? I was under the impression I was buying a CD full of music. I've got to assume there is music on the CD, or else how will I be able to play it in my car on my way to class later?
If so though, why are the music files "invisible" to my PC? Is this Nettwerk's way of circumventing digital appropriation?
The Bandlink site says this of their software. But read the small print at the bottom...i.e.:
By uniting the existing CD media distribution model with online media and new software technology, Bandlink offers the full power of the Internet without the loss of revenue and piracy issues common to many Internet Music services.
So...
Bemused and somewhat unsettled, I sit here, listening to Sarah's sublime voice slide out of my PC's speakers, wondering.
Have I just been greeted with the next one-up strategy of corporate control over culture and popular tactics, with the strategy now disguised as a copyright protection gadget and forced on me against my will?
Sarah isn't sounding quite as sweet today.
Sunday, November 02, 2003
:: And now? ::
From the Dewdney book:
That is a 1998 statistic. Wow. What would it be now?
From the Dewdney book:
"The total surface area of all the virtual worlds on the Web is already seven times as large as the Earth's surface"
That is a 1998 statistic. Wow. What would it be now?
:: Life in-between ::
A concept I keep tripping across lately in the books I'm reading is the concept of liminality. Essentially it is a transient time or event boundary, an in-betweenness of a moment or event, in between one state of being or identity and another. Common liminal events are weddings, graduations, new unemployment, going into labour, etc. Common liminal moments are the person who is about to shoplift for the first time, just before they do so and become irrevocably forever a shoplifter, or the closing of a door on an old apartment or house before the person hands in the key and moves on to the new home.
I think liminality is a time in which we truly feel our humanity, our ability to choose. It's a state of being between choice and action, between decision and effect.
The poet Robert Frost understood liminality deeply -- his poems "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Eve" and "The Road Not Taken" suggest or dramatize it.
While I've been reading about liminality in Turkle and Shields, neither really fully apply the concept it to the online space and experience. Both mention it just in passing - it isn't a part of their overall thesis.
Somehow, though, the concept speaks to me at many levels when applied to the virtual experience. There are so many liminal moments and events online, enough that each person might be said to experience many in a given year. They can be as small as switching ISPs and therefore IPs, or as large as letting go of an email address and assuming a new one, deliberately killing off a character in an online game and preparing a new one, or deciding to learn a new game and thereby preparing to embark in the new online world.
If applied to digital gaming, per the example above, what might be learned if the liminal moment of "dying" and being recreated in the game are examined? If the process of creating a new character, liminal definitely, were observed and questioned and thought about? What is that feeling that beats in the chest when you assign yourself a name and begin to craft a new identity? How does that experience change a person?
This whole concept is one I'm going to bookmark in my head and here, to keep an eye on and consider as a research topic. I think there is lots there to study and attempt to understand.
A concept I keep tripping across lately in the books I'm reading is the concept of liminality. Essentially it is a transient time or event boundary, an in-betweenness of a moment or event, in between one state of being or identity and another. Common liminal events are weddings, graduations, new unemployment, going into labour, etc. Common liminal moments are the person who is about to shoplift for the first time, just before they do so and become irrevocably forever a shoplifter, or the closing of a door on an old apartment or house before the person hands in the key and moves on to the new home.
I think liminality is a time in which we truly feel our humanity, our ability to choose. It's a state of being between choice and action, between decision and effect.
The poet Robert Frost understood liminality deeply -- his poems "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Eve" and "The Road Not Taken" suggest or dramatize it.
While I've been reading about liminality in Turkle and Shields, neither really fully apply the concept it to the online space and experience. Both mention it just in passing - it isn't a part of their overall thesis.
Somehow, though, the concept speaks to me at many levels when applied to the virtual experience. There are so many liminal moments and events online, enough that each person might be said to experience many in a given year. They can be as small as switching ISPs and therefore IPs, or as large as letting go of an email address and assuming a new one, deliberately killing off a character in an online game and preparing a new one, or deciding to learn a new game and thereby preparing to embark in the new online world.
If applied to digital gaming, per the example above, what might be learned if the liminal moment of "dying" and being recreated in the game are examined? If the process of creating a new character, liminal definitely, were observed and questioned and thought about? What is that feeling that beats in the chest when you assign yourself a name and begin to craft a new identity? How does that experience change a person?
This whole concept is one I'm going to bookmark in my head and here, to keep an eye on and consider as a research topic. I think there is lots there to study and attempt to understand.
::Real, authentic and saturated ::
I was thinking about identity presentation online and so I went back to flip through a few pages of Turkle's ""Life on the Screen" and found one truly notable section. It is in chapter 10, in a section called "Logins R Us" on page 256-258.
Turkle is applying the concepts of a social psychologist called Kenneth Gergen (1991) and she makes reference to his theory of the "saturated self".
She says of the concept:
I've deliberately picked out what I see as the the best parts of her argument to share here, but I invite you read or re-read the section…For now, I'll use Turkle's own words to sum it up .. It's about the idea of "identity as multiplicity" (p.258)
What fascinates me about this is the juxtaposition with the other things Turkle has gone over in this book i.e. is online real? And can online be authentic? When these questions are fused with the question of a saturated self or a multiplicitous self, a new meta question appears...How does a real person who happens to be virtual also be simultaneously multiple and authentic?
Other questions are also suggested...
Where are the boundaries between front stage and back stage?
Do they still exist?
If they do, are they even relevant in this context?
The questions, then, aren't so much about the "why" of it all, as it is the "how" and the examination of the end result. While Turkle didn't deal specifially with the gaming identity aspects of MOOs and MUDs and MMPOGs etc, the question is clearly there in her work, though not necessarily synthesized in this way.
When you add in aspects of gaming where the demand to juggle an ever-larger multitude of selves that may or note be "other" for your flesh self, when your online identity saturates and splits and refracts your presentation of self over and over, what is the micro and macro social and personal consequence of this act? And is this act truly so different from the multitude of selves we already juggle in our daily lives i.e. co-worker, mother, manager, webbie, etc. etc. etc.? or is the only difference the place or the quantity of selves juggled?
It is my belief, therefore, that this is where sociologists should be focusing attention, in order to observe, examine, ponder, theorize and inform. This is certainly an area I intend to focus on in my own future research.
I was thinking about identity presentation online and so I went back to flip through a few pages of Turkle's ""Life on the Screen" and found one truly notable section. It is in chapter 10, in a section called "Logins R Us" on page 256-258.
Turkle is applying the concepts of a social psychologist called Kenneth Gergen (1991) and she makes reference to his theory of the "saturated self".
She says of the concept:
"we colonize each other's brains" causing us to become "saturated with the 'many voices of humankind -- both harmonious and alien'…we exist in a state of continous construction and reconstruction; it is a world where anything goes that can be negotiated. Each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony, and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality'…(we) come to embrace new possibilities. Individual notions of self vanish "into a state of relatedness. One ceases to believe in a self independent of the relations in which he or she is embedded'…". (p.257)
I've deliberately picked out what I see as the the best parts of her argument to share here, but I invite you read or re-read the section…For now, I'll use Turkle's own words to sum it up .. It's about the idea of "identity as multiplicity" (p.258)
What fascinates me about this is the juxtaposition with the other things Turkle has gone over in this book i.e. is online real? And can online be authentic? When these questions are fused with the question of a saturated self or a multiplicitous self, a new meta question appears...How does a real person who happens to be virtual also be simultaneously multiple and authentic?
Other questions are also suggested...
Where are the boundaries between front stage and back stage?
Do they still exist?
If they do, are they even relevant in this context?
The questions, then, aren't so much about the "why" of it all, as it is the "how" and the examination of the end result. While Turkle didn't deal specifially with the gaming identity aspects of MOOs and MUDs and MMPOGs etc, the question is clearly there in her work, though not necessarily synthesized in this way.
When you add in aspects of gaming where the demand to juggle an ever-larger multitude of selves that may or note be "other" for your flesh self, when your online identity saturates and splits and refracts your presentation of self over and over, what is the micro and macro social and personal consequence of this act? And is this act truly so different from the multitude of selves we already juggle in our daily lives i.e. co-worker, mother, manager, webbie, etc. etc. etc.? or is the only difference the place or the quantity of selves juggled?
It is my belief, therefore, that this is where sociologists should be focusing attention, in order to observe, examine, ponder, theorize and inform. This is certainly an area I intend to focus on in my own future research.
