Location: Meatspace, drinking a cold beer

When I was a grad student killing time to avoid reading the latest chic-but-boring work of literary theory, I would pick up the works of the early Cyberpunk writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Recently NPR ran an interview with Gibson about his latest book, Spook Country.  Gibson’s no longer writing science fiction; this novel, with its post 9/11 conspiracies and domestic surveillance, is set in the very recent past.  In the interview, Gibson seconded something Sterling predicted in the late 1980s, in the introduction to an anthology called Mirror Shades: ours is the first age that looks and feels like science fiction.

These writers all imagined virtual worlds that we have or are building.  Before I dive back into the Linden metaverse for more fun and games, I want to step back and consider what we have already done with Second Life’s virtual world.  We don’t have body-gloves, or electrodes strapped to our heads, or “teledildonics,” yet, but we do have 3D graphics, voice, and other features of the Cyberpunks’ visions of tomorrow.  And already the borders between real and virtual grow fainter.

Ask yourself this as you read Di’s two columns about real people struggling with problems that arise from having an avatar: virtual infidelity, crises of identity because one poses as a nonhuman.  I want “Ask Di” to become a regular feature of this blog, because what she’s doing is important; we are on new ground here, even if many of the problems carry over from our real lives.

Are we better humans for having avatars?  Or just different, extended, ones? Can we now all consider ourselves cyborgs?  Theorist (and not a boring one!) Donna Haraway posed this question some time ago, about the same time Sterling wrote about the oddity of the age we inhabit. 

Any tool that extends our capacities makes us cyborgs—the cave-man’s club, a pair of bifocals, a telephone, a moon-rocket, an avatar.

What we do with any of these tools makes all the difference.  In the next few months, I hope to find out, as a journalist in-world, how readers’ avatars are changing their real lives.  If you want to write to me directly about this or meet in-world, please drop me a line at:

jessid –at- mac –dot- com

Thanks to my incarcerated pal Pappy Enoch for the “rite loverly foto of my German lady-frend, Miz Tenchi.“  She’s the avatar on the left and is not the mother of Marcus Boo-Boo Aurelius Enoch (I reckon); I hope she will write a guest column soon.

Nice avatar, Tenchi!

Be sure to check the “In a Strange Land” Archive for old posts

Cecil,

This is a great idea. I’m using voice, at the prodding of Di, though I need a decent headset so I don’t sound as though I’m talking out of a can.

I’m considering how me might have an in-world panel as an add-on “experience” for a panel I will join in New Orleans next year…let’s keep talking (in SL and here) about this idea.

This was an excellent article today.  It made me think about a bunch of new and exciting things.

Most recently, I’ve been watching reruns of TWILIGHT ZONE and original STAR TREK. Certainly, there was the wonderful period during the 1960’s that produced innovative sci-fi storytelling that influenced people from Bill Gates to the Lindens.

I think it is time for you to host a panel conference in-world and invite some speakers and moderate a discussion around your topics.  Frankly, I have been zooming around SL trying to find voice-discussions on your topics so I can learn and share ideas. 

If we are becoming the sci-fi of the past..what will be considered the sci-fi of the future??

Cecil

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