Thursday, January 15, 2009

Emmerson's place


Meeting Emmerson was one of those serendipitous events we look back on and smile. Describing him would not do justice to his personna, so instead I simply posted a picture. This is Emmerson’s place. I believe it to be under construction, but from what I am able to surmise, it will be the coziest place (I hesitate to call it a junk yard) I have yet to see in SL. Why? Well, the overall design in set in place so that avatars may move about freely without ceiling constraints, for one, and the “walls” are more like caves, with nooks and crannies, where you can go play hide and seek indefinitely. This is very important for a noobish avatar handler like myself. I constantly bump my camera against ceilings, and not doing so for once inside a home, was liberating. While the rest of us suckers try to emulate the environments that we have seen in RL to SL dimensions, Em sits back and enjoys life in his forest of rusting surfaces.

/me sighs

Update: Emmerson’s site has undergone a post-apocalyptic remodeling and is no longer the open space mentioned above…

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Punks

Before there were cyberpunks, before there were steampunks, or neko punks, there were the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones, as the originators of punk movements that not only emerged to counter mainstream orthodoxy, but who came to define more than a look but a lifestyle, a subculture in itself. According to Hebdige (1979?), subcultures are formed from communal and symbolic engagements with larger societal systems from which they do more than resist, but rather hybridize what is available as material culture and along with anything else that can be used to fragment them from the mainstream. In essence, the intended result is open subversion as antithesis to tradition, hence the alienation and emptiness embodied in punk style. Thus, their primary goal as constantly evolving subcultures was to distance themselves from prescribed societal conventions to the furthest extent possible.

Norms respond to subcultural manifestations by absorbing them and making them commonplace. And what did (and does) conventional wisdom dictate in the face of subcultural threats? Appropriation. And their parade of these subcultural practices to the status of fad. This can occur by way of commodification, by making it into public property and valuable merchandise, or by way of ideology, by its perpetuation as a good (or bad) thing in the public eye: recall Versace safety-pinned couture? Recall seeing multiple hybridizations of the punk style in SL? Being that SL is a virtual simulation of RL, the same manifestations are commonplace on the grid. SL businesses thrive on replicating punk styles, and we as consumers commodify them to exhaustion. Even freebie boxes are replete with the stuff. And we run around with an excess of rips on our virtual jeans, tattoos on our skins, and dried blood on our t-shirts, even when in RL we are computer nerds, are afraid of contracting hepatitis through artists’ needles, and blood nauseates us, wet or dry. That’s the convenience of SL: we can all enact our punkness without apparent repercussions. Perhaps we should thank Sid Vicious for enabling us dorks to feel all bad-ass, even if only in avatar mode. :P

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Why blog?

Update 12-12-11: While my interest in technology and education remains, I have since refocused my research to what is done outside of the classroom environment via social networks. Yes, still online and mediated through technology, but still....a slight deviation, shall we say? Hehehe....

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As a researcher looking into the use of technology in education, I found SL to be a very interesting and engaging format, albeit one not free of complications, but one serendipitous and organic in nature. Deliberately or not, in Second Life (SL) I have come to enact those very same stances that define me in real life (RL): I am a learner in both.


I must admit that I entered SL with a sense of arrogance, thinking primarily of what could be derived from it’s many forums for my own needs in RL. Initially, ignorance veiled my view of the function of SL for many of its residents. I can't ever know what motivates individuals, or collectives, to enter virtual worlds, however, I no longer approach SL strictly as a game, or even a simulation, but as an organic, shifting, and evolving forum where people learn to do things in cooperation. Where people, through communities of practice, become friends. Consequently, I find that the people behind the avatars enrich my life by sharing their experiences and knowledge much the same way friends do in other social networking sites. SL provides a public sphere where life, first or second, can be enacted in multiple ways, through multiple lenses, by all its residents.

So...herein I intend record my thoughts as they pertain to what I know in RL, as they evolve to include what I have come to know about SL. I write to not forget.