Promotional Video of Second Life:
Brief History and Growing Possibilities with Second Life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b72CvvMuD6Q
A powerful point that was made in the Baran and Dennis text was “Storytelling and music cease to be important for extended families. Instead nuclear families gather in front of an enthralling electric storyteller.” (pg 200) It has been said that historically we first passed down information and stories verbally from generation to generation. It was then when mass media outlets such as newspapers, radio and later television and Internet that this tradition of verbal exchange of information has ceased. Chapter eight of the Baran and Dennis textbook discusses the cultural interference that media has on our cultural development. SecondLife.com claims that it further links our connection to one another. What are your views on that based on both the reading and your own personal opinion towards this site? Can you see this site as a cultural enhancer or destroyer in today’s age?
For those of you that do not know SecondLife.com is an online world where individuals customize themselves and the world around them. The two video links provided above are both informational sources that will give you more in detail the workings and uses of SecondLife.com. As mentioned in Chapter 11 in the Baran and Dennis text, SecondLife has been infiltrated by corporal businesses and has expanded its online world through product placement. By adding currency and interactive features for users, it is more parallel to the real world than one would think. What are your first impressions when hearing of such a community? Do you see the trend of cultural dispense with the use of these types of games? Do you see SecondLife as the next “must need” social network account like Facebook and LinkedIn? Looking at this SecondLife world and the possibilities that it provides would you participate in this community?
You bring up some very interesting points regarding the influence media has on socialization. The clips of Second Life you posted gave some good insight on what the site actually is, especially for someone like me who doesn’t really know what it is all about. I can see right away that there could be some beneficial aspects to this program, but there could be some harmful aspects as well. Page 303 of Baron & Davis discuss symbols that have developed in our culture, and how we derive meaning from these and develop schemas, which we then use to understand the world and we develop and socialize using it. I see these schemas as being both good and bad. Obviously we need common symbols in order to communicate with one another, but what happens when these symbols are harmful to certain people or groups? Page 305 of McQuail’s Reader discusses how symbols conveyed on television can have a significant impact on the viewer and on perceptions of what these symbols are representing from real life. We are constantly bombarded with images of the latest fashion and trends, and we learn how men and women should look through the people portrayed on television. If this is what is making up our schemas, what is it doing to people who do not look, talk, or act like these popular and desirable people on TV? I think Second Life might give people who believe they don’t belong and they don’t have anyone to relate to a place to connect to other people who have similar interests and will support one another. While I think this is a good thing, and it allows people from all over the world to socialize with one another, it could also turn negative as in my opinion nothing can replace face to face social interaction. Also, there is the larger issue at hand where media is creating a culture in which many people feel that they do not belong, and they need to reach out through the internet to virtually socialize. Maybe we can do something to gain back a sense of community support all over the world so that less people will feel like they don’t “fit in”.
ReplyDeleteThis Second Life platform brings up a disturbingly interesting revelation in the way societal interactions are evolving. I'd like to preface my response by saying that media such as this are facilitating a new type of message dissemination that facilitates more than an interaction: it facilitates a complete engrossment.
ReplyDeleteSymbols tend to be a key concept in understanding interaction theory. These abstracted ideas and cultural spearheads provoke thought and societal integration into tangible and vocalized ideas. In the Baran & Davis readings, it is cited that "we use symbols to create an experience of consciousness (mind), our understanding of ourselves (self), and our knowledge of the larger social order," (Baran & Davis, 303). Speaking in the sense of traditional (non-modern- TV, radio, video games) media this implies that we learn symbols of our society through these messages and choose to decode them to apply to our lives and societal understanding as a whole. In Stuart Hall's discussion of encoding and decoding messages from TV, it is cited that "representations of violence on the TV screen 'are not violence but messages about violence'," (Hall, 303). What the combination of both of these citations implies is that media provides intangible representations that are meant to guide each individual societal interaction and integration.
However, these new MMO's have broken this barrier of symbol and interaction into a whole new realm. Users of these worlds take the messages and symbols presented and apply them directly to their life within that alternate life. Thus, by living vicariously through their avatars, "messages about violence" can be perceived as actual violence against this extension of their identity. In extreme cases discussed in Baran & Davis, users engrossed in these games view Second Life as their primary society. Thus, the line is now blurred. Instead of decoding these messages to an application in real-life society, they decode them directly to their life in that alternate society- decoding within the encoding broadcaster.
This could prove to be problematic for human development. In a world where identity can be constructed to liking, symbols can become more and more interchangeable and customizable. However, the molding never leaves the original encoding platform. What does this say about those users in real society? In my opinion this false integration creates a generation that is increasingly disconnected from reality, living in utopia. It is turning an escape into a reality- a sign of denial that causes the development of hermits. The integration of real world finances and companies to purchase virtual products increasingly disconnects those users from reality. If you can afford a sports car in fake life and believe it to be a true life, why bother trying in reality?
Personally, this disturbs me. I used to be involved in RPG (Role-Playing) video games back in my preteen PlayStation days. However, these games still maintain a certain distance from complete engrossment. The characters you play still live a set storyline and thus cannot provide a vicarious living as realistic as these completely customizable MMO's. The scary part is that these users can amass themselves in virtual debt that translates to real life debt. The more and more these games become frequented, the more users will lack true societal function. Healthy use is still a possibility of course; but the trend still seems to be complete engrossment. I cannot stress enough that when the decoding takes place within the encoding platform, reality is blurred and the symbolic function of the message is void.
At first when I heard of Second Life.com (and your article was the first place that I had heard of it, I was at first taken aback but now, Im not so sure.
ReplyDeleteAs college students we all are very dependent on Facebook. I know myself that Facebook is the homepage of my computer, It's that go-to-website I go to when I need a quick study break, and I am constantly updating it and checking it on my phone.
Facebook is social but there is very little instant interactivity. Yes, there is Facebook Chat but that's about it. At least Second Life.com lets you move your characters around and interact with other people. In the McQuail reader on page 307, the author describes the negotiated code and negotiated version as "it, operates with exception to the rule. It accords the privileged position to the dominant definition of events, whilst reserving the right to make a more negotiated application to "local conditions", to its own more corporate situation". This struck me as what Second Life.com was doing. They are taking the basic universal idea of the community and people living in and negotiating the terms of it and just making it a virtual world". I believe that when you look at the idea int hat context, and if that's the way a person fits in to society thats fine and acceptable to be on it all day.
However, there is a point where the line between real and virtual becomes too blurry. The idea also fits in to symbolic interactionism as defined on page 301 of the Baran-Davis text book the "theory that people give meaning to symbols and that those meanings come to control those people". I think there may come a point where people are defined by their Avatar and not recognized in real life. At this point it becomes a huge problem that needs to be taken care.
As technology improves we are walking a very fine line between virtual and reality.