[mtp-teoria] second life na iDC

[dusan]

ahojte

na iDC liste prebehla dvojtyzdnova debata o second life (SL).
v sumari nizsie.

kto nan nemate cas, zhrnuty v jednej vete: SL a vobec vacsina online
virtualnych svetov 'pozuje' ako otvorena platforma a i napriek vedomiu,
ze z "nematerialnej" prace (napr. univerzity do nich klonuju
svoje budovy, aktivisti v nich vedu svoje kampane) profituje viacmenej
len elita online podnikatelov, vela uzivatelov je v SL stastnych
podobne ako vedia byt stastni v servilite voci kapitalizmu realneho sveta.

mate so SL niekto skusenosti? neviem v sk/cz zatial o vela ludoch co
ho skusali. (mm trochu to znie ako znie to trochu ako)

dusan



---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [iDC] Second Life wrap-up; thanks
From:    "Joshua Levy" <joshualev at gmail.com>
Date:    Sat, March 10, 2007 5:27 pm
To:      "IDC list" <idc at bbs.thing.net>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks all for a stimulating discussion about Second Life, gaming, labor,
and education.

Who is manufacturing virtual worlds and MMOs?  In response to Michel
Bauwens question about this, Ana Valdes points out that the games market
is almost 100 percent American, with these large companies having bought
our smaller European companies over time.  However, Julian Dibbell points
to a chart that suggests that U.S. companies are in fact responsible for
only 40-60% of worldwide games and the us market share is 61.3%.   The
question of market dominance vs. ideological dominance comes into play
here.  Ana argues that, even if the market share isn't 100%, most video
games share an ideology with the U.S., though Michel says he witnesses in
Thailand dominant themes from Korea and Japan.

And on to the big L, which inspired some of the best discussion on the
cultural ramifications of virtual worlds, virtual labor, and virtual
economies.  Trebor opened the discussion by questioning the need to
replicate the architecture of real-world sites within Second Life.  "Why
do we need a replication of our own campus? Why not rather build a Black
Mountain College with a Bauhaus Annex? Why teach in this virtual
environment? Will SecondLife become a 3D version of Wikipedia, a virtual
knowledge bank that offers a playful and fun interface to
participant-generated content? Will students simply demand such playful
access to knowledge?" he asks.  Eric Gordon offers a compelling argument
for why he helped reproduce Emerson College's architecture in SL: "our
decision to reproduce the architectural layout of campus and to recreate
the Boston Common was deliberately made to correspond with our
understanding of the platform's possibilities.  We see Second Life as a
way of creatively re-imagining the space.  While, we're not able to screen
student work in the physical Boston Common, it will be possible to do so
in Second Life.  "

  In addition to this recreation of material space, he finds that SL mirrors
"first life capitalism" as well, that inequalities between labor and
capital exist there as they do anywhere else in the world.   Like
historical relations between labor and capital, Trebor argues that users
of sociable web media are not aware of their servitude towards the owners
of those systems, though, like Michel, I take issue with his assertion
that "many people in the US actually think that they are 'happy' and
perceive this distributed labor of the sociable web as a fun leisure
activity."  We are not in a position to judge what many people in the U.S.
think about their station in life, and to imply that the distributed labor
of the sociable web simply provides gains for the owners of capital while
pulling the wool over the eyes of the participants isn't fair towards
either party.

Alan Clinton offers a refreshing take on the problem of virtual labor: "At
the risk of revising Marcuse, couldn't we say that consciousness of
servitude is not really the problem so much as providing strategies for
political agency?  People who are laboring know that they are laboring.
People (and let's not dismiss the global south so quickly) who are
suffering the violence of capitalism know they are suffering the violence
of servitude.  They may lack awareness of ways to name this violence or
attack it, but they are not unaware of their suffering."
In response to the problem of proprietary systems like SL posing as open
platforms, Andreas Schiffler suggests a radical, peer-to-peer system that
involving shared servers and open source software that become a challenge
to the "'Operating System + Deskop'
metaphor sold by Microsoft and Apple."  This setup could also provide an
open source and peer-to-peer alternative to SL.

In response to Simon Biggs' provocation that "SL is a misnomer. It is not
a second life but simply a kind of first life, as constructed by a
dominant elite, represented in such a manner that it will function to
further inculcate and embed its associated ideology on a
global scale. It will sustain the fundamental ethic of consumerism...that
we are all potential suckers or grifters (often both) and that nobody is
responsible for what happens to anybody else. In short, it is another rip
off culture," I would point him to a group that I'm involved with,
RootsCampSL, progressive activists that use SL as a platform for their
work.  No one that I know there believes that their work stays in SL, but
that it offers a unique space (in addition to other unique space) from
whic to get the message out.  I would agree that SL is not a second life
but in fact an extension of first life, but I have failed to find a
dominant ideology there and in fact find it a fertile training ground for
almost any ideology at all -- kind of like first life. Of course, I could
just be blind to my own exploitation...

And Charlie Gere helps us remember that terrorism, exploitation, or even
rape in SL are not the same as their real-world counterparts.  "Again
imagine the reaction of someone who has been involved in attempting to
build and sustain communities in, for example, Iraq or Palestine,
listening to someone describe the problems of community building in SL. I
think grasping and holding onto this distinction is incredibly important."
 We need to keep perspective when talking about these virtual worlds and
to remember that, however they provide us with experiential or spiritual
stimulation, they are still secondary to the actual life-or-death
circumstances most global citizens face.

Looking forward to more discussion of this going forward; I trust that, in
the face of so much media hype that inflates the economic and sensational
aspects of SL, we can all provide an ongoing counter-commentary that
provides a little more depth and context.

-Josh Levy
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