I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own tastes.

I was recently reading a RS article about deadmau5 where he was described as post-social – the idea being that as a loner most of his social relationships are mediated by the available technology. This doesn’t mean that they are not social and it doesn’t mean that they are not relationships, but they are somehow different than the connections we make in RL. There is distance, mediatization, implied anonymity – although it often fairly simple to find out who people are in RL if they are not extremely careful about setting up things like emails, blogs, second lives and beyond. As I have explained before - these tools offer information and occasional connections, but for me there is always a shred of doubt. Everything anyone tells me in a virtual environment could be true or false or somewhere in between. Which is fine since what I find interests me most is the conversation itself – on whatever level it transpires – post or other wise.

The other day while in-world I had someone send me a friend request after about 30 seconds of sharing the same space. My IM question to them was – why would you want to friend me – you know nothing about me – I could be a stalker or psychopath (as well, I suppose, could anyone I have digital or real world communications with). We ended up having quite an interesting conversation about post-structuralism – so my defenses lowered and the request was accepted. And this is where I catch myself. Not wanting a “real” or “truth-full” connection I substitute a kind of wry intellectualism for emotion – which pretty much amounts to the same thing. Unwilling to accept or acknowledge or develop an emotional connection in a mediatized environment I find I am a sucker for the intellectual conversation. How is this any different? How is having a light-hearted or otherwise discussion about mediataization, post-structuralism, or simply looking forward to the evening’s dance club chatter any different from using SL (or any social network or virtual world) to discuss work or family issues, fears, longings, desires or otherwise? Cultivating that cool detached aesthetic so often linked to postmodernism (and in my mind the evolving clockwork exterior) belies connections that are often presented as mere surface, but in reality cut much deeper.

This is what I didn’t see until I explored an out-of-world via in-world exchange. And I realize that focused on one particular aspect of virtual worlds I often miss or fail to acknowledge what is really going on. Paul De Man hit it on the head with the idea of blindness and insight – which are two poles seemingly hardwired into human nature that are hard to avoid. We see something because we are looking for it, but often miss how we see. And I find that this is a large part of what I am interested in exploring in SL – a sort of faith-based approach to the digital. I don’t necessarily mean this in a religious or spiritual way – although that is certainly there – but the kind of unshakable belief in something – anything – that is taken for “truth.” I send a response out in SL or through FB or via email and honestly do not know who is on the other end. And yet, I am engaged in and place faith in the response.

Now it is possible that all these social networking sites are in reality an elaborate and bizarre Turing Test designed to gather information about our likes and dislikes, our syntax and our shopping habits. This may seem like some kind of sci-fi paranoia but keep in mind that the folks that created Google set out to develop a kind artificial intelligence – which is why places like Amazon seem to know what books, music, and video games I am likely to buy and why my local supermarket knows what its clientele are most likely to gravitate toward. I mentioned the other day in class that Orwell’s frightening picture of Big Brother in 1984 developed in far more insidious ways than he had imagined. Not only are we watched all the time (and recorded, and sorted, and noted) – but we largely pay for that service. If many of us are now post-social is it possible that we are also post-informational? I do tend to rationalize the fact that I really don’t care one way or another. I deny truth in a digital environment but for some reason have faith in the conversation as a means of expressing or exchanging ideas - true or otherwise. I am not quite sure what to do with this yet – so in the meantime here is a picture of me riding a sheep.