Presentation: Turkle's 'Virtuality and its discontents'
Sherry Turkle’s Virtuality and its discontents: Searching for community in cyberspace opens with the much-touted angst of modern man: the loss of social interactivity and strong local networks. Turkle suggests that online communities are an attempt to recreate this sense of belonging. She cites TV, along with mall culture and other forms of media as forces which contribute to our acceptance and preference for the artificial. This preference for the artificial over the real she calls the 'Disneyland effect'. This leads into the 'crocodile effect', where the fake is more compelling than the real. Finally, she points out that due to the compelling nature of 'artificial' experiences, we may believe that we've achieved more within it than we actually have.
I read Turkle's conclusion as an affirmation that we can have both the virtual and the real - but it's important to distinguish between the two of them, and Turkle makes it clear that the 'real' should at all times have precedence over the virtual. I felt her most emotive quote was this one on page 387:
"...is it really sensible to suggest that the way to revitalize community is to sit alone in our rooms, typing at our networked computers and filling our lives with virtual friends?"
I feel that this image unfairly panders to the geek stereotype. It is complicated by the fact that online groups and personalities do interact away from their keyboards – yesterday there was a Perth meeting of deviant artists, and there have also been RL meetings of Livejournalers, to name two instances that I know of. Other communities interact the opposite way; ie., form groups IRL then continue to communicate online.
I doubt that the majority of people who participate in online communities feel that their online interactions are an adequate substitute for RL communities.
On another note, I was amused by Tama's accusation that Turkle may not have sufficiently immersed herself into MUD culture to study it. Personally, I have roleplayed in various forms excluding MUDs since I first started using the internet in 1998. I visited the infamous Lambda MOO as research for this paper but was quickly put off by the archaic and unfamiliar interface. From experience, it certainly does take time (as in any RL society) to get the most out of an online community. However, for those of us who may not have spent their childhood lost in the ether, here are a few roleplaying links that are much easier than MUDS to lurk on:
Kip's Inn. Fairly standard fantasy chat-based RPG, with ties to the fictional world of DragonLance, part of the infamous Dungeons and Dragons line. Peak lurking times are around 9am-1pm.
HP Dungeons, a forum-based Harry Potter RPG on livejournal. Rated R, with (much) homoerotic content. One of the better Potterverses, with a number of Big Name Fans participating. I particularly like their Lupin.
RolePlayOnLine - one of the best general messageboard RPG sites, but more useful for those intending to play rather than lurk. It's another bonus that the admin lives in Perth!
posted by Lehni @ 10:04 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I found Turkle’s article to be the worse one I have read so far for this unit, so I decided it would be a good one for me to do my mandatory blog post number 5 on. I think Tama summed it up nicely when he called her the “Dr Phil” of the online world.
You comment that Turkle notes that media helps to contribute to our acceptance and preference of the artificial. I think that Turkle is making a mistake by calling online communities and online activities artificial. What makes going outside and kicking a ball around for ten minutes any more ‘real’ that creating a character on a MUD and taking that character to the virtual park to converse with other characters? One may be accepted widely as a simulation (the MUD), but I would argue that both can be seen as simulations. However, I talk about that in my last two paragraphs.
Her blind axiomatic acceptance that virtual communications are inferior to RL ones is also troubling. It seems to me that she assumes a blatant hierarchy where RL activities are first and foremost important, followed by (if absolutely necessary) virtual activities. I feel this is an unfair assumption to make. Of course, a person who spends a lot of time in virtual spaces has to spend some time on RL activities – by necessity they have to eat, sleep occasionally, etc. However I don’t think that this point proves anything about leisure activities one decides to partake in.
For instance, if a person decides to spend ten of their 12 leisure hours per week on a MUD, how is that any less valid than spending ten hours per week writing a novel or going to the movies with friends, etc? There seems to be a fear in Turkle’s article that is reminiscing of an old grandpa telling you about “the good old days” (my apologies to any old grandpa’s out there). As Mark Poster commented in his lecture for this unit a while back, fear of new technology is not new, and it is usually heralded by cries of debauchery and an end of all that is good by certain (usually vocal) sectors of the community.
Also, when Turkle is discussing the loss of emotion that is (according to her), lost in virtual gaming, she says that when someone types in what there character feels, what they (the person doing the typing) feels is not considered. She says: “when we get our MUD persona to “emote” something and observe the effect, do we gain a better understanding of our real emotions…” (page 265 of reader). I think this is a blatantly stupid thing to say.
Even if it is true, I don’t think it proves the point she wants it to prove. For instance, when we watch movies, read books, or see someone crying at the airport we are observing people other than ourselves going through their lives and having their emotions. So when we read about young Pip (from Great Expectations) feeling upset, do we gain a better understanding of our real emotions? The answer could be yes, no or maybe, but what I think is really important to note is that the answer is the same across the board. In other words, if we can gain a better understanding of our real emotions from watching a movie or from observing people at a bus stop, then we also can from participating in MUDs and other virtual gameplay.
I also find the assumption that RL is better that the virtual interesting from a philosophical standpoint. Often our ‘real’ selves are performances that we change, tweak and switch between depending on the situation. Nietzsche in particular discussed the idea that humans can never be known, even to themselves. In other words, I cannot know myself – I can know various performances I partake in various situations, but nothing of the essence of me. So every RL experience I have is experienced through a performance I partake in.
In this way, by looking at RL experiences as a byproduct of our performative selves, then the idea of performing an identity online no longer seems to be a big divergence from other experiences we undertake. Of course the medium in which we perform has changed (from our physical neighborhood to our virtual one), and the ability to assume a number of somewhat distinct and significantly variable identities has increased dramatically, but I still feel this is of secondary importance once the performitivity of every experience (RL or otherwise), is acknowledged.
OMG Saywood, I think you should have given the presentation :) I'm very much looking forward to your one on the Sims next week.
I read your comment yesterday and found it really interesting, especially the examples of how we could consider some more mundane aspects of everyday life to be artificial, which I hadn't thought about in that way before.
I wonder if we restricted our discussion of community/virtuality too much to RPG settings. After reading this post by Francesca in the Tuesday 2pm tute (yes I'm a linkaholic), I wonder if it would have made a difference to her if the participants were in a general chat setting and not roleplaying as obviously alternate identities? Particularly as (I presume) a significant portion of people haven't RPed in this context before, and thus it's harder to imagine how one would react in a situation such as Dibbell describes.
I think my article was very relevant to the discussion. It helped that some of Turkle's points were based off the same Bungle affair that Jessica's presentation dealt with. I wish that we could have discussed Jo's article in a bit more detail since it was rather different.
I wish I had remembered to specifically ask the opinions of people who hadn't roleplayed (online or otherwise) before. I know that I'm extremely biased because of my familiarity with the medium and I'm very curious as to how others who aren't so familiar received the Turkle and Dibbell articlea. How intimidating is it for people to speak up if they aren't experienced in the scenarios we're discussing? (I noticed, for instance, that all the commentors to Francesca's post linked above are politely disagreeing with her).
i've not been into the whole online role-playing thingy though i am aware of it's existence. Turkle's paper is one possible way of looking at online communities but i get a sense that she is an outsider with a bias. An online experience is as real as any experience and though it is true that shopping online is not the same as talking a stroll through your favourite woolies (as an example), it is maybe a matter of integration of both spheres of existence(the virtual and the physical) to get a different point of view. (thus making us cyborgs?) With the explosion of technology, it is hard to evade anything with a microchip in it. I love my computer and cant live without it. I think it is fairly normal to think that though the virtual is an extension of my life experiences, the physical world is more important than the virtual one. I agree with you Anli. This image unfairly panders to the geek stereotype.
Post a Comment
<< Home