We started class getting acquainted with Second Life (SL)
www.secondlife.com. Dr. Song provided
four step instructions for students to create an account, add classmates,
navigate/communicate the system and change their avatars appearance. The first
hour or so was spent navigating and learning SL before we began our class
discussions in the virtual world. Questions that arose were:
1.
What experiences do you find orienting or
disorienting in SL?
2.
What cultural logics don’t make it from the
physical world to the virtual world?
3.
What is there to learn about SL?
4.
How do you communicate? What are the modes of
communication? How do typing and typos affect communication?
5.
Are their ethics or social mores that you think
of while in SL?
6.
How do you communicate and move at the same
time?
7.
Are their barriers in communication?
8.
Do you feel embodied or disembodied as your
avatar? Does SL record body changes?
During the SL exploration/navigation period classmates made
comments like:
·
“This is awesome!”
·
“It’s strange to be in a room together and not
talk to one another.”
·
“I’m confused what is happening”
Many students got a lot of enjoyment and put a lot of effort
into changing/manipulating their avatars appearance or “bodies”. Student remarked that their avatars were
becoming “freaks” or “weird”, as avatars weren’t limited to human like forms
but could be animals, cars, robots, machines, a speck, dragons, fantastical
creatures, etc. Options for avatar bodies and clothing were endless.
Below you will find the Google Drive Link to the portion of
our class session that took place in a SL chat room with no verbal
communication. The Virtual Class met at
Tom’s Ethnographic Island used in his book about SL. We couldn’t find his house
on the island but we fond the island.
The conversation is14 pages long so I didn’t want to paste all 14 pages here:
Challenges from class discussion in SL chat:
·
Some people were prioritizing manipulating their
avatars and discovering SL than participating in the online conversation
·
Physical cues were missed via the chat
·
Typos
·
You can’t type and explore/move your avatar; you
have to pick one thing at a time
·
Missing comments from classmates and not being
able to respond fast enough to a question or comment before another comment
coming in
·
Tiring- hard to stare at screen (also hard to
pull away from screen once we had a class break)
·
People felt more comfortable saying things in SL
than they would typically say in class (i.e., curse words, jokes, casual
internet language etc.)
·
People remarked that they didn't really feel
engaged to one another and that other games like World of Warcraft or other
video games allow for engagement.
Verbal Discussion
Anthropology and
Virtual Worlds
·
Do virtual worlds have value?
·
Why does Boellstorff present too much
theoretical work from classical anthropologist in his book?
·
Someone mentioned that to study virtual worlds
you can’t be an outsider, you have to be an insider to fully understand them
The Body
·
Concepts of embodiment can only go so far since
the avatar can’t eat, drink, sweat, or feel
·
Someone suggested that the avatars body isn’t
real but an imitation of a real body
·
Why is the dominant view of the avatar third
person? If you were your avatar why
wouldn’t first person view be the primary viewing option?
·
Why does the avatar fly?
·
What does it mean that the avatar can change
clothes?
o
Someone mentioned that it was very hard to
change the avatar’s clothes and this was compared to being a toddler trying to
dress vs. being 20yo.
·
What happens to an idling avatar?
o
Dr. Song mentioned that she left her computer
open one time and came back to see her avatar being attacked
Children and the
Internet
·
How do children use the Internet?
·
Do parents still have Internet talks like they
did years ago?
·
Why do kids use Social Media and the Internet
now?
·
Are the concerns for Internet safety and privacy
shifting? Is it now more about bullying rather predators?
Online Presence
·
“You always have an online presence”
·
How long will our media, tweets, pages, cyber
information be around?
·
Will viral videos continue to be popular?
·
Are their boundaries and ownership in the online
community?
Discussion questions
from readings
·
Given what we read, how should we study virtual
words?
·
What are you studying when you study a virtual
world?
·
Was Coming to Age in Second Life an
emphasis on anthropological classical work to legitimize the books place in
anthropology?
o
What makes Boellstorff’s SL anthropology?
§
Students suggested: Time, Place, Political
Economy, Culture-forming/building/maintaining, humans operating the avatars
o
Is SL about playing a game, creativity, or
socializing?
o
What was Boellstorff’s research question?
§
Is there culture in Second Life? Are they
crafting new ways of being “human”?
§
Other questions to consider: Is their meaning in
every culture? Even virtual worlds?
§
If virtual worlds have always been experiences
that we’ve constructed, why wouldn’t they be meaningful?
·
Virtual worlds aren’t an ontological shift but
still have a culture that naturally has a meaning.
Class closed on the idea that because there is an avatar and
scenery, this makes SL a physical place unlike
Skype or Facebook. This draws on assumptions we may already have of how we
think the world is but this research
can build on those assumptions and/or sometimes change them.
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