Weekly Post: Virtuality

In “Virtuality,” Bonnie Nardi analyzes the online forums through which political and social aspects play themselves out in unique ways previously absent from “real-world” social and political constructs.  She focuses on the concept of the “technological turn” to address worlds created out of hoards of people taking seriously all aspects of specific virtual scenes, such as World of Warcraft.  These aspects include the function, form, evolution, and restrictions and abilities given to the players, or members, of the virtual world.  She analyzes how people must deal with these crafted regimes, especially in a nonvirtual world increasingly consumed with the virtual.  On this line of ideological construction, she further investigates “virtual discontinuities,” actions possibly only in a virtual world, or actions that only take place in a virtual world as a result of the social behaviors separated between what you do “online” and what you do “in reality.”  In addition, this idea of virtual discontinuities is analyzed with a lens of affordance, a concept created to capture technology’s capacities relative to the individual and to groups of members in a particular virtual arena.  Taken directly from the article, as perceived by perceptual psychologist JJ Gibson, “animals directly perceive affordances as possibilities for action in the environment, which are determined, on the one hand, by the properties of the environment and, on the other hand, by the action capabilities of the animal.”  To be put in context related to online venues - games, realities, blogs or forums - for both personal and cultural expressions, affordances are a technology’s allowances for action and interaction that mediate cultural activity, potentially changing the person and/or the culture with which an individual is interacting. 

              While much of the second half of the article explains how political movements, corporate functions and practices, and virtual personal exploration (Second Life) are situated in a reality outside of technology and that the virtual and the real interplaying with each other speaks volumes for how certain virtual areas are conceived of, only a specific niche of the newly arising virtual markets really struck my eye as interesting.  The article touches upon how the concept of Second Life, the title pointing directly at the dichotomy, seems to exist as an escape from reality; it, after all, is a Second Life for your human self in a virtual reality with much of the minutia of everyday life.  This idea in particular seems to contrast the idea of “free labor” and “free data” corporations glean off of willing participants who contribute their interests in forums, blogs, game sites, social media, and a plethora of other applications and environments.   In doing so, online communities of many different varieties, whether it be a book club, gaming organization, or replying to picture caption contests, contributed economic value to companies and organizations through a willingness to interact and share their opinions through the internet freely and openly.  While I have issues with the ethics of corporations using certain social data sets from not necessarily willing participants, I find the contrast between Second Life, something that seems almost isolationist in practice, and “free data” accumulation, acquired through online communities sharing their ideas, thoughts, and wishes for particular online venues, to be an interesting construction in a complex world of virtuality and reality.  On one hand, you have virtual worlds offering an escape from reality while on the other, you have the real world (with a focus on economics and corporate advancement) gaining advantage directly from the intertwining nature of virtuality and reality, and those that wish to take advantage of the happy interplay.