If That's The Answer, What Was The Question?

I've spent a lot of time this week with two issues from the blogosphere. One's the "avatar realism" discussion that so many thoughtful people have taken on. Another is a post by Gwyneth Llewellyn, an overview of the self-governance initiatives in Second Life. I've discovered that I'm approaching both of these issues by asking a couple questions, questions that could be a starting point for discussing cultural and political actions in digital worlds.

I've struggled to organize my thoughts about Gwyn's post, and it took replying to a good hard challenge on the avatar realism issue to pull it together (Thanks, Jen!).

So, a New World Notes post discussed "realistic" avatar shapes, as a follow-up to earlier posts about the politics of female forms in Second Life, and Gwyn discussed legislative and judicial efforts. Both of these seem to be discussing atomic-world statements: people bringing into the digital world something from the atomic, as a solution to some problem.

(Let's pause here. Not everybody with a realistic avatar does so *as a political statement.* Commenters have come up with several good and non-political reasons for having that sort of avatar. I'm not, and never was, talking about those avatars or reasons. I'm talking about the people in the NWN posts and in other posts (Kate's got a good roundup here), who have used their avatar's appearance *in order to make a social or cultural statement.* If your avatar is realistic because it pleases you aesthetically, or because you're using your avatar as an icon or trademark for your business, or because you just rezzed yesterday and don't really know what's possible yet, that's great. But I'm not talking about you.)

(And, I've got to add, that's why my saying "but I'm not talking about you!" to some people wasn't the racist "but some of my best friends are..." that it sounded like to at least one person. I really wasn't talking about Jen, or Giulio, or ahuva - though I what I said might apply to Kedawen, something I could have been clearer on)

OK, you've just hit the news because you're Making A Statement with something imported from the atomic world. I'm going to ask you two questions (let's all pause here for the Monty Python flashback - and my favorite color's blue - no, gray!).

First: Is this a solution to an *atomic world* problem or a digital worlds problem?
I think that the "realistic avatar" is an example of the former. There are real issues of discrimination in the atomic world, over skin color, over body shape and size. These are problems, and they need solutions. But they need solutions *in the atomic world.* You're not going to solve racism in the digital world. You're not going to solve the glorification of anorexia - a *physical* issue - in the digital world. So, I'm going to argue that your efforts are being spent in the wrong place. If you have an atomic problem, solve it in the atomic.

(Now, I've heard a lot of discussion of racial and body-shape prejudice being expressed in SL. Standing up against *that* is important. Where's the line? Honestly, I don't know.)

Some astute commenters have noted that this is the ghastly old immersion/augmentation issue all over again. Yeah, it is. If you see SL, or any digital world, as its own place, importing a social problem or a political issue is downright rude: it's like going on vacation to a foreign country and arguing the benefits of your political candidate or party back home. It's rude, and it's imperialistic - it's implicitly saying that your community's politics are more important than those of the ones you're visiting.

But, if you see digital worlds as just another communications medium, and that there's only one world, one culture - yours in the atomic - then there's no good reason not to use that medium to push your views on cultural issues.

So, yes, I'm arguing the immersionist view, and if you reject that view, we'll mostly be talking past each other. But as so many people have pointed out, there aren't that many people who're reflexive extremists on one end or the other. For most all of us, we're sorting our way as we go, and we think through our positions issue by issue. That's why I'm writing - to sort through my own thoughts, and to lean on all of you for help on the way!

Second, if it *is* a digital worlds problem, do you really have the best solution?
I think the governance initiatives fall under this question. Yes, there are real issues with digital-worlds identity and management - this isn't atomic politicking. But, for the people who advocate legislatures and courts, I have to ask - are those the best solutions for the digital-worlds problem, or are you grabbing for the tool that's familiar rather than the tool that's best?

It seems to me that legislatures, courts and electoral politics are technologies, tools like any other. Legislatures and courts in particular are (in part) information-processing technologies. They were developed around the 17th Century in their modern forms as solutions to contemporary information-proceessing problems (among other problems). Electoral politics developed in the 19th Century in response to changed information-processing problems (and other things).

Does SL face the same problems as a large territorial nation in the early stages of industrialization and mass communications? Even if so (and I've got to think the answer's no), have we developed no better tools in the past couple centuries?

If you're going to argue that we should use centuries-old tools in the digital world, you're going to have to really convincingly claim that the problem is the same as the centuries-old problem that spawned those tools, and that there's no better solution.

I really don't think the governance advocates have done either.

This could flow-chart nicely, if I could draw (where's Botgirl when I need her?!):

• Is the problem located in the digital world or the atomic?
• If it's in the atomic, please try to solve it there, tyvm.
  
• If it's in the digital,
• Is the problem the same problem that generated the atomic solution you're proposing? If not, please try again.
• If it is the same problem, is there no better solution?

This way we only get to an atomic-world import if

• the problem is digital,
• the digital problem is the same as the problem solved by the atomic technology, and
  
• no better solution is available.

So that leads me to think that realistic avatars *as a cultural/political statement* are objectionable, and that I'm really dubious about legislative and judicial systems *as a solution to SL management problems* (if you're involved in them because you like roleplaying government, or you're trying to get clients for your atomic business, that's fine!).

This is why, though I love Kate's "everythingness" and Myg's "live your god damn dream," I can't stop there. Our world is in flux. It could become its own thing, or it could be just another part of the atomic world order. Every choice we make tilts the balance some little bit. I'd like to see us put our thumbs down on the side of creative freedom and exploration. So, not all choices are the same...

Realistic Avatar Shapes? Mmm, No.

Once again a post of Hamlet Au's has launched me into a full blog response. New World Notes has been addressing issues of "realistic" avatar shape and size, covering a movement to create female avatars bigger and less fit than the SL standard.

While I understand the concerns of the people involved in this movement, to combat problems in the atomic world of unhealthy thinness and of prejudice against people who aren't thin, I think their embrace of an aesthetic of "realistic" avatar shape is misguided at the very best.

Bear with me here: I'm going to bring some serious transhumanist smackdown. I usually reject that label, mostly because I've met too many transhumanists who haven't worked their way up to human yet. But transhumanism is exactly what's behind this issue, and you all need some tough lovin' here. So hang on tight: this won't take long, it's for your own good, and it hurts me more than it does you, really...


Why does any technology exist? To do things that can't be done better with other tools. That's true of everything from the screwdriver to the internet. So, what about the technology of Second Life? Why use it? Why come to SL?

To create things, to do things, that can't be done better elsewhere.

The first thing we create in the digital world is our selves. If we're replicating the selves we bring from the atomic world, we're missing the reason to use the technology of SL. Unless you really feel your physical form is the best possible representation of your self, you should be using SL's tools to create an avatar that's better.

Now, "better" is going to vary depending on your sense of aesthetics and your overall values. Better for some means boobalicious or uber-buff. For some it means stronger, or leaner, or a different size, color, gender, species. I'm not going to fault your aesthetic here, or criticize your ideal, as long as your digital self does reflect that ideal image that you have. I'm not arguing against an aesthetic of shapeliness, far from it! (points to her short, shapely partner, for example)

No, the only bone I have to pick with you is if you're rejecting the ideal entirely for the sad comfort of the "real."

Look at you, there in your atomic world. No, I mean it. Stop and look.

Is that your ideal? Is that the best you can do?

Chances are good you eat too much and exercise too little. You poison yourself with pollutants in your air, water and food. Your skin has been damaged by the elements, aged by stress caused by your social systems - and more on that mess in a moment! If you smoke, well, you deserve the wrinkles, the raspy voice, the cough and wheeze.

That's just the stuff you're responsible for. Then there's all the stuff that isn't your fault: accident damage, aging (look me in the eye and tell me you really think that's a good idea, something worth keeping. No, I didn't think you could do it), gender dysphoria, genetic defects.

Your form, your atomic form, has been marked by all those things, some your responsibility and some that aren't. Each scar, each wrinkle, each unhealthful kilo on your ass marks a failure. Yours, your society's. They mark a failure to manifest what you really are, what you know yourself to be and to be capable of. That "realistic" form you're stuck with in the atomic is a map of your defeats, of your failures of will and of imagination.

That's what you want to exalt in a place where you can finally do better?

Sometimes I think there's a war on imagination, a real war being fought by those who hold power in the old, feudal, atomic order against those who'd return creative power to the people, who'd deliver us from artificial scarcity. This avatar shape thing could be a battle in that war, an ideological strike by the meme "the ideal is bad; the ideal punishes you for being inferior; don't strive for the ideal but glory in your shortcomings." It could be.

Or, it could be you just need Cousin Soph to swat you upside the head and go, "What, are you STOOPID? You can do better than that!"

Because, look. That's why Philip created the foundations of this world. That's why tens of thousands of people create new things here, why hundreds of thousands come to SL to work and play and love and live.

Because you atomic people know, in your calcium-deprived bones you know, that you can do better. You know that you've been stuck inside a system that might have been useful a century or three ago but right now just holds you back, dumbs you down, dwarfs you from a creator and a citizen into a consumer.You know you can do better!

So, do better. Do better. Create your digital selves as your ideal, whatever form that might take. And if you're still atomic people, if you don't come to call the digital your home and embrace digital citizenship (and we welcome you, all of you who do, in Extropia!), then you've got more work to do.

What do you need to do next? Look at that avatar you made. Look at that picture of health and strength and self-creation.

Then, start asking questions.

Ask: why can't I have this in the atomic world? Why can't I have health and youth and strength and beauty?

Why, with all the brains and talent and wealth in the atomic world - some four orders of magnitude more than in SL - aren't these things even easier in the atomic than the digital? Why are the systems that take your wealth spending it on things less valuable than health and longevity and beauty? Why do you listen to the memes and ideologies that try to convince you that you shouldn't have these things, that it's wrong to expect them, that you need to embrace and welcome and defend your personal and social failures to create health and youth and strength and beauty?

Ask those questions, and demand answers. Demand them of yourself: ask yourself where you've put your time and wealth and talent, and what you've gotten in return. Ask your rulers, your bosses, your politicians, that whole parasitic class that has gotten those things, paid for by your taxes and your entertainment dollars. Ask them why you don't have what they do, and demand answers.

Now, pick a world and change it. I'm here in the digital, trying to defend this space as a better way. Lots of good people are at work in the atomic, trying to give us heath and youth and strength and beauty. They're scientists, transhumanists, people fighting for the ideal against the surrender to the real. They're activists, idealists, trying to take back our creative power and our freedom, trying to build systems of equity, trying to make the atomic as good as the digital can be. Pick a place to stand and people to stand with, and get to work!

But, omfg, don't come asking for your failures to be exalted, for an aesthetic of poison and neglect and suffering to be enshrined as somehow noble! I know you; you can do better, in one world or another. So do better! Demand better!

OK, that's all for the tough love. You're all straightened out now, right?

Me, I'm going to take my skinny chalk-white winged tattooed ass back to work. There's a lot to be done...

Talent, Influence and Fame

Hamlet Au's been on fire lately, and a recent post of his, Are You Intimidated By Second Life Celebrities?, has gotten a lot of people thinking about the nature of Second Life society and their relationship to it.

The comments to the post are terrific. Some of them started picking apart the nature of celebrity: CronoCloud Creegan's post in response suggests that SL is getting too big for individuals to have major influence anymore, and that the concept of the FIC (Feted Inner Core) should be replaced by a broader notion of "avatars of influence."

That's good stuff: CronoCloud has touched on a fundamental change, something that I think has been echoing though so many of our second lives this summer. But, more on that next time - don't let me forget. But for now, let's look at celebrity:

CronoCloud's post, along with some of the other comments, got me realizing that we mean different things when we speak of "celebrity" in general, or in the SL context.

I started picturing a Venn diagram with three circles - Talented, Influential, and Famous (OK, I tried drawing this in GIMP. I'll save you the results - but let's just say they prove I'm not Talented!). There are people who are just one, some who're various combinations, and a very few who're all three (hi, Hamlet! :D ).

Famous? Often when we use the term "celebrity" we mean people who're only in the Famous circle, who aren't famous for being Talented or Influential, but just for being Famous. SL's got its Famous people, as you'd expect from any community with a huge active social scene - though I'm thinking of Marx Dudek's comment "amazing...in Liechtenstein" here! I don't really know people in the core of this circle, and they don't interest me.

Influential? This is an interesting one. It seems to me there's two kinds of Influence. One is the machine-politics "fixer" sense - the sense used in the Feted Inner Core (FIC) concept. That kind of Influence refers to people who broker in favors, who can get things done by manipulating the system, or who benefit from access to those fixers. My count here is zero: I've never even had a conversation with a Linden, and couldn't be farther from that sort of politics.

But there's another kind of Influence. Digital worlds are still a cloud of possibility: our social relations, our political economy, our culture, are still fluid. They haven't gone through that phase change of crystallization yet. They will, sometime before too long - they'll take a form that will be very, very hard to change, just as atomic-world societies did in the past century.

There are people working to shape that form.

Some are software and hardware engineers defining the substrate of our worlds, and some are critics of engineering that fails to understand its social context.

Some are atomic politicians, whose fear-mongering shapes our worlds through the prudent or cowardly reactions of our worlds' corporate owners.

Some are imperialists of politics or business, who want to absorb our worlds into the dominant cultures of the atomic, to ensure we're all properly taxed, identified, verified consumers of corporate-capitalist extruded entertainment product.

Some are scholars, philosophers, activists, critics, analysts seeking to describe our worlds as they are, to understand the forces at work - and maybe to shape the digital worlds into something new, something truer to their nature than mere copies of the atomic.

These are the people who interest me.

Talented? Oh yeah. This is where SL shines, and why digital worlds are wonderful. Talent still gets freed here. What happens when you take away the scarcities and enforced hierarchies of the atomic world? You get Talent. Explosions of it. Profusions of it. You get a humanity that makes you want to weep for joy at the sheer breadth and diversity of its creativity. To paraphrase Stewart Brand, we *are* as gods, and unchained, we are beautiful and powerful beyond words.

I adore the Talented, and collect them and show them off, and do what I can to help them along.

To answer Hamlet's original question, call it conceit, or obtuseness, or mad extroversion, but I haven't found myself intimidated by *anybody* for their Fame, Talent or Influence. I've got no trouble chatting up anybody Talented or Influential, even if they happen to be Famous. I'm *interested* in those people, curious about them, and eager to know them. Sophrosyne's Saturday Salon was created out of that, to give me an excuse to sit and chat for a couple hours with all the people I admire, and to share them with my friends.

Reading everybody's comments to Hamlet's post, it seems such a natural and universal reaction to be shy or intimidated around the Talented, Influential and/or Famous - but it seems my OEM software just didn't include that module (FWIW, it's not a case of "digital courage" - my atomic affiliate, the Other Personality, is at least as shameless as me. Actually, they've done some things that would make *me* headdesk... and that really takes some doing!).

I'm glad I don't have that module though: the lack of it has become my market niche, my schtick, my thang - I'm the SL person who'll talk to anybody, make introductions, connections, get them talking to each other. I'm maybe not the universal solvent - gods know there are people I refuse to deal with or grant legitimacy to. But I think that's what I do best, and my best role in SL society: using that shamelessness to showcase the Talented, Influential and Famous.

"Soph - Being Shameless So You Don't Have to Be!"

Yeah, that works... :D