I remember the discussion we had in class last week, where we talked about the significance (and frustrations) of the continued existence of the burning life grounds, months after the, supposedly temporal, event took place. In RL, if you went to the playa now, it would be deserted. Part of what makes SL so wonderful for some might be that magic. In RL you would starve and face the elements out on the playa without a community of burners to help sustain a society, but thanks to the magic of SL, you can have that experience, of being the only one at burning man/life.
After reading Smith, I couldn't help but think about SL in the terms of the literal and the magical. Flying around vs. politely apologizing for the inevitable bumps we take as avatars with slow processors. When describing the features of ARK, I couldn't help but marvel at what the possibilities of playing around in an atmosphere where you control the force of gravity. Also consider the metaphor of the machinima in SL, and how they could be metaphorical for information capture in RL, and how, while the enhance the possibilities of the program for skilled users, such uses of magic limit the general teachability of SL. I remember some of the problems I've had getting it to work.
Information capturing techniques in SL, are so advanced that you could record every sight and sound of your (avatar's) whole SL existence. Could this be a grim look into the a future of ubiquitous computers? Will it be that grim? Safer? Right now we are facing these questions in America. Will new technology lead to Big Brotherism?
I couldn't stop thinking about the disadvantages of a sophisticated "point-of-sales" system, while working in a restaurant. While they do a lot of you job for you (calculations, tracking ordering, some act as a virtual waiter captain, telling you where to seat new parties), POS systems take away from your ability to do you job your way, and make defrauding the company (sometimes it's nice to "buy" your friends drinks) impossible. Conscious of POS's surveillance, crafty waiters always find a way to do what they want, but the observe effect of knowing your every move is being tracked (down to the time it takes to run food after the orders are up) does encourage a sort of obedience. This obedience is false and born out of fear. When a server finds a way around the meddling POS, they exploit it in spades.
As Agre writes "no matter how thoroughly the capture process is controlled it is impossible... to remove the elements of interpretation, strategy, and institutional dynamics. You may not have to tip a robotic waiter, but would the dining experience be the same without a smiling face?
Determining a designs usability, while evaluating it's expressional qualities, is a valuable conceptual tool to carry with me when critiquing SL (something I do now without such tools). Any program, or theoretically any designed "thing" can be examined in these terms. I had a great sandwich earlier today, but it wasn't very usable. In fact, it was a sloppy mess. The sandwiches designer spent too much time thinking about the wonderful effect (expression, maybe) the marinara would have on the meatballs, but not about the functionality of a drippy hero. Not an especially apt example, but I use it because it shows just how mundanely this concepts can be applied. They really shine when applied to a full user interface virtual world, where considerations of usability must be put into every one of the many complex functions, but the fact that they can still be applied to a sandwich (sorta) points out just how powerful they are as theory. When we deconstruct complex new forms of communication like this we get to see them for what they really are new "things" that can teach us lessons about what good design is, rather than abstract metaphors that fall short of who ever (if anyone) designed RL.
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But the sandwich was functional, no? In that its function was to give you nutrients. Only no one designed the sandwich in such a way as to tell you how to eat it. Or even how to use it. You can plainly see how the sandwich works, so if anything wrong ever happened with it (i.e. the bread getting too soggy) you could improvise a solution, such as..i dunno...getting another piece of bread. Maybe you have a thing for cockroaches, and you use the sandwich as bait. Now the sandwich has become a cockroach facilitator...in your deranged lifeworld, anyhow. Maybe the sandwich-maker learns this about you, and the next time s/he makes the sandwich, s/he makes sure not to use cockroach-unfriendly marinara...doesn't change the use of the sandwich or prescribe a new function (cockroach bait), but does facilitate the sandwiches expression in your lifeworld. I think I've probably taken this analogy too far, when all I really wanted to say was that I enjoyed it and found it humorous. I also wanted to say, that I share in your ambivalence about ubiquitous computers in the Big Brother sense - but I also think it's already happened as opposed to something that's going to happen. It's just a question of it getting worse...or maybe more importantly, a question of who Big Brother is, these days...
-jenny b.
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