Junkyard Blues Web Site

• JUNKYARD BLUES
  a history and description of the 13 sims comprising the junkyard complex

The Blues Culture of Second Life

A woman's baby died and she could not give it up. After a week went by her friends pressed her to go and see The Buddha. He said to her "Yes I can make your child alive but first you must collect 3 grains of rice from a household that has not known sorrow" Of course the story is clear, she was unable to do this and in the process discovered that life was concomitant with sorrow. A western way to realise this is through the blues. In second life all nationalities are represented but in my view the national boundaries, cultural socializations are subsumed under a greater rubric that of human suffering and also there is an expression of human awareness, triumph over adversity and joy. Not all blues is sad by any means. However the point to be made is that it provides a very powerful cultural medium.

N.B. My avatar is 7ft 6ins 228 cms

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Culture and Reality

We have firmly established the presence of a network; a representative of yourself that you have tailor made to express your identity and the ability to interact at varying degrees of privacy and intimacy.

"Cyberculture, like culture in general, relies on establishing identity and credibility." We have seen how with the creation of an avatar an identity is created that is credible. "However, in the absence of direct physical interaction, it could be argued that the process for such establishment is more difficult." Not in Second Life. Sure it takes some skill but through observation of your peers and those that have been "in world" for some years, an identity that is appealing and "fits" is not difficult. Your avatar represents you.

Culture

Wiki : Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively. Distinctions are currently made between the physical artifacts created by a society its so-called material culture and everything else, the intangibles such as language, customs, etc. that are the main referent of the term "culture".

Looking at second life we can see a commonalty that gives second life its culture. A society if you will. Firstly there are avatars in many and varied shapes but still avatars collectively with profiles. The 3D space has global characteristics that are present everywhere. Chat everywhere is the same. Viewers to view and interact any scene are broadly the same. There is a market place that anyone can access containing thousands and thousands of items that can be bought with lindens. There is a multiplicity of nations yet all conform broadly to standards. There are TOS which are adhered to. There are mutual interest groups. There are friends. In second life there are ratings which have their own regulations. These are general, mature and adult. You cannot for example be naked in a general area. In a 24 hour period there are between 30k and 50k people in second life. Avatars (people?) fall in love, fight and have sex.

An important feature of second life is the ability to own your own space. This may be a house, an island or land. i have a small tropical island. When I got it it had a few palm trees. It has taken me weeks to create what is now my second life home. Others I have visited are unique to that person. adjusting arranging can take hours as well as shopping for that perfect vase. Just as your home in real life reflects your personality so does your home that you have created in second life.

Second Life is a cyberculture but is it real?

Reality

We would say the mind body complex existing in a physical space, is us experiencing reality. However if I am communicating with another person, whether or not we occupy the same physical space this is also real. This communication can be via a keyboard and is in real time therefore it is real. In second life the chat is real. I may be a 63 year old male yet wear a female avatar and giggle when boys make jokes. My avatar my representation may be completely false i am treating second life as something real only to my avatar. Some say that second life is not real because the avatar is merely a construct. But it is the physical me who is manipulating the avatar, just as a puppeteer pulls the puppets strings. The puppet isn't real, the puppeteer is.

Human beings have an incredible ability to adopt a persona. Just look at actors who do it with consummate skill. They are not surrounded by the environment we see on screen but are surrounded by lights scenery cameras and lots of other people. Still they are able to act an intimate love scene as tho they were the only two people in the world.

What if on your computer screen I put a life like "person" and when I typed the "person" said the words? What if the scene was that of a club and out of the speakers a DJ spoke your name? What if others there would greet you as a friend? What if you were flattered and felt at home? What if you danced with an attractive partner, danced with grace and skill?

What if you fell in love?

Undoubtedly real relationships are formed.Friendships last years and through private messaging the real person shares their real life. Their real name, family details, work, where they live (Yes this has resulted in real life stalking). Photographs, real life, are shared... Partnerships formed in second life have led to the two people getting together in the real world. Great emotionality is generated in second life. Avatars do not experience emotion. In my opinion those that say second life is just a "game" are wrong. There is confusion. Read this :

[02:33 AM] aaa: OMG stop thinking real ,,, this is a game but unlike other games it connects to peoples emotions , I cried when dumped ,I cried when walked in on my wife dancing with a man , I cried when my husband in IW asked me to marry him .I cried when John decided to return to SL ,,, X has a SL wife no place for me but I wont cry this time because I have learnt to play the game
[02:34 AM] dudestarship2: thats why i'm introspective. this is a game?
[02:34 AM] dudestarship2: feels pretty goddam real to me
[02:34 AM] aaa: it can be a game that hurts

A friend sent me this:

[4:21 AM] Sxxx: Interesting case study for you, 2 people have been together in SL, very close relationship, contact through email and chat outside SL, know quite a bit about each other's real lives, have shared lots of good times and bad times, had rows and love, split up, got back together, know each other's deepest darkest secrets, are incredibly loyal to each other, gotten totally under each others skin, and expect to stay in contact of some kind till the internet collapses, but have no likelihood of meeting in rl, and although he knows her real name, she has no idea what his is, even after 3 years.

Another friend said:

[07:30 AM] Mxxx: I always ask people who think SL is a game what the rules are and how do you "win"

Those that say second life and real life are distinct separate entities are wrong in my view, but some treat it so it seems. We have a debate here I think. Please comment.

Personally............

I cannot sign this Dude nor can I sign it Philip its

Dude / Philip

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Comming of age in second life

Abstract:

Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. Coming of Age in Second Life is the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe.

Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group.

Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself.

Tom Boellstorff is professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

You can read it here ...I'm not an anthropologist. I'm an educated user. I am biased. Dude Starship and I are aspects of the same entity. He even has his own domain DudeStarship.comThis hub is an intellectual exercise that has and will evolve into a synthesis of identity. We are all cyborgs now.

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We Are All Cyborgs Now

A Transcript of the video (Italics and pictures mine):

I would like to tell you all that you are all actually cyborgs, but not the cyborgs that you think. You're not RoboCop, and you're not Terminator, but you're cyborgs every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices. So what's a good definition for cyborg? Well, traditional definition is "an organism to which exogenous components have been added for the purpose of adapting to new environments." That came from a 1960 paper on space travel, because, if you think about it, space is pretty awkward. People aren't supposed to be there. But humans are curious, and they like to add things to their bodies so they can go to the Alps one day and then become a fish in the sea the next.

 

I have professional scuba gear in sl I have an on board computer, have to refill my tanks and manage bouncy.

So let's look at the concept of traditional anthropology. Somebody goes to another country, says, "How fascinating these people are, how interesting their tools are, how curious their culture is." And then they write a paper, and maybe a few other anthropologists read it, and we think it's very exotic. Well, what's happening is that we've suddenly found a new species. I, as a cyborg anthropologist, have suddenly said, "Oh, wow. Now suddenly we're a new form of Homo sapiens, and look at these fascinating cultures, and look at these curious rituals that everybody's doing around this technology. They're clicking on things and staring at screens."


Myself (rear in Arab robes) dancing with a houri. Dressing and dancing to the strains of traditional Arabian Music.

Now there's a reason why I study this, versus traditional anthropology. And the reason is that tool use, in the beginning -- for thousands and thousands of years, everything has been a physical modification of self. It has helped us to extend our physical selves, go faster, hit things harder, and there's been a limit on that. But now what we're looking at is not an extension of the physical self, but an extension of the mental self, and because of that, we're able to travel faster, communicate differently. And the other thing that happens is that we're all carrying around little Mary Poppins technology. We can put anything we want into it, and it doesn't get heavier, and then we can take anything out. What does the inside of your computer actually look like? Well, if you print it out, it looks like a thousand pounds of material that you're carrying around all the time. And if you actually lose that information, it means that you suddenly have this loss in your mind, that you suddenly feel like something's missing, except you aren't able to see it, so it feels like a very strange emotion.

I have a wallet size 500 gigabyte USB hard disk with thousands of Mp3s and a dozens movies I like. It also has a Linux operating system so I can go to any computer plug in a voila ME. I also leave my main computer on so I can access that anytime too. From anywhere there is a computer with an Internet connection. Wallet size needs no power supply Feel "disconnected" Without it.

 

The other thing that happens is that you have a second self. Whether you like it or not, you're starting to show up online, and people are interacting with your second self when you're not there. And so you have to be careful about leaving your front lawn open, which is basically your Facebook wall, so that people don't write on it in the middle of the night -- because it's very much the equivalent. And suddenly we have to start to maintain our second self. You have to present yourself in digital life in a similar way that you would in your analog life. So, in the same way that you wake up, take a shower and get dressed, you have to learn to do that for your digital self. And the problem is that a lot of people now, especially adolescents, have to go through two adolescences. They have to go through their primary one, that's already awkward, and then they go through their second self's adolescence, and that's even more awkward because there's an actual history of what they've gone through online. And anybody coming in new to technology is an adolescent online right now, and so it's very awkward, and it's very difficult for them to do those things.

RSA: Teaching:


So when I was little, my dad would sit me down at night and he would say, "I'm going to teach you about time and space in the future." And I said, "Great." And he said one day, "What's the shortest distance between two points?" And I said, "Well, that's a straight line. You told me that yesterday." I thought I was very clever. He said, "No, no, no. Here's a better way." He took a piece of paper, drew A and B on one side and the other and folded them together so where A and B touched. And he said, "That is the shortest distance between two points." And I said, "Dad, dad, dad, how do you do that?" He said, "Well, you just bend time and space, it takes an awful lot of energy, and that's just how you do it." And I said, "I want to do that." And he said, "Well, okay." And so, when I went to sleep for the next 10 or 20 years, I was thinking at night, "I want to be the first person to create a wormhole, to make things accelerate faster. And I want to make a time machine." I was always sending messages to my future self using tape recorders. But then what I realized when I went to college is that technology doesn't just get adopted because it works. It gets adopted because people use it and it's made for humans. So I started studying anthropology. And when I was writing my thesis on cell phones, I realized that everyone was carrying around wormholes in their pockets. They weren't physically transporting themselves; they were mentally transporting themselves. They would click on a button, and they would be connected as A to B immediately. And I thought, "Oh, wow. I found it. This is great." So over time, time and space have compressed because of this. You can stand on one side of the world, whisper something and be heard on the other. One of the other ideas that comes around is that you have a different type of time on every single device that you use. Every single browser tab gives you a different type of time. And because of that, you start to dig around for your external memories -- where did you leave them? So now we're all these paleontologists that are digging for things that we've lost on our external brains that we're carrying around in our pockets. And that incites a sort of panic architecture -- "Oh no, where's this thing?" We're all "I Love Lucy" on a great assembly line of information, and we can't keep up.

I disagree. We can and do keep up. I do anyway. I run 30 gTLDs [generic top level domains) and 30 blogs. I have ten email accounts . When I add something I share it L
I have a 21st Century Network

And so what happens is, when we bring all that into the social space, we end up checking our phones all the time. So we have this thing called ambient intimacy. It's not that we're always connected to everybody, but at anytime we can connect to anyone we want. And if you were able to print out everybody in your cell phone, the room would be very crowded. These are the people that you have access to right now, in general -- all of these people, all of your friends and family that you can connect to.

Ambient intimacy is a great term to describe what happens in second life. Two avatars become very close and act out real scenes together.

And so there are some psychological effects that happen with this. One I'm really worried about is that people aren't taking time for mental reflection anymore, and that they aren't slowing down and stopping, being around all those people in the room all the time that are trying to compete for their attention on the simultaneous time interfaces, paleontology and panic architecture. They're not just sitting there. And really, when you have no external input, that is a time when there is a creation of self, when you can do long-term planning, when you can try and figure out who you really are. And then, once you do that, you can figure out how to present your second self in a legitimate way, instead of just dealing with everything as it comes in -- and oh, I have to do this, and I have to do this, and I have to do this. And so this is very important. I'm really worried that, especially kids today, they're not going to be dealing with this down-time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.Second life is an immersive 3D world. Is it addictive? If it were a game I would say yes, highly addictive. Here I think the question is wrong . For the blues community does not "play" , it is a cybercommunity. You cannot get "addicted" to a communnity. So if you think about it, the world hasn't stopped either. It has its own external prosthetic devices, and these devices are helping us all to communicate and interact with each other. But when you actually visualize it, all the connections that we're doing right now -- this is an image of the mapping of the Internet -- it doesn't look technological. It actually looks very organic. This is the first time in the entire history of humanity that we've connected in this way. And it's not that machines are taking over. It's that they're helping us to be more human, helping us to connect with each other.











The most successful technology gets out of the way and helps us live our lives. And really, it ends up being more human than technology, because we're co-creating each other all the time. And so this is the important point that I like to study: that things are beautiful, that it's still a human connection -- it's just done in a different way. We're just increasing our humanness and our ability to connect with each other, regardless of geography. So that's why I study cyborg anthropology. Thank you.

TED.com Amber Chase Cyborgs. If you do not watch AT LEAST one TED video per week AND you have watched 1 hour of television well, fer shame.

An interesting aside: When I was creating my post on hyperconnectivity

 I was also creating my Japanese page Subarashii.org It means wonderful.

I saw the picture the haiku followed as expected.

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Cyberculture Main Stream cyberrealism

Gorillaz are a main stream band who use avatars in their videos, In this video we see a wonderful mixture of the real and the cyber to tell a story. (Stylo 13 million views) I include it here as an example of what I call cyberrealism. Another neologism but one that has been coined before. The cyber is main stream.

The story is a dual between avatars (Gorillaz) and Bruce Willis.The avatars win. Take note of the ending. Avatars are malleable and can adapt to any environment.

So, perhaps that is a little tongue-in-cheek. Watch the video please.

Cyberrealsm

Are cybercultures real?

is a cyber community as real as a physical community?

• 88% Yes
• 13% No
• 0% I Don't Know

at the time of putting up this site 8 people have voted in this poll.

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• My Second Life - SL n Stuff
  A blog about my personal experiences in second life. It was created on the 18th of November 2012 so is very new. There are pictures and videos. If you visit please leave a comment..

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• Cyberculture
  This HUB without video. It is a free download just acknowledge where you got it.  Could do with a hand.