OneAvatar

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People have suffered real world pain (& much worse) for virtual world 'actions' since at least the Inquisition - well, actually a moment's thought says - 'for the whole of human history'. It's not just religion - but power and politics too & then there's play-acting, storytelling, reverie (the site of many transgressions which go unpunished & many where of course the dreamer may punish themselves). Or losing your dole money on a single bet in a game of poker. Gambling in general - there's a virtual/real correspondence! ( The game rules are the software, the cards, or dice or horses or the revolver loaded in one of the six chambers the hardware)
Saying, writing, thinking, betting, painting…all sorts of symbolic behaviours have always carried real world consequences.
Virtual worlds are not new but stand in a long and unbroken line of human cultural practice - who made Second Life? Human beings, with all their previous cultural baggage.
michael

hello there!
while i agree a lot with what you say, i must add a bit to that. And, actually, i add to it something that goes in the same direction.
As it seems that i keep on having the same debate over and over. :)
no, nothing changes at all. It just gets systematized, and more tools are available to perpetrate the detachment from the body.
While all of the things you say about the past are true, there always was a "physical human" behind all of that. One that had to do a whole bunch of things to "act": physically go to a place, eye contact, touch, and so on. And the consequences of doing things were quite different, too. Being looked at, touched, hit, imprisoned, takn to places, tortured, pulled off a gambling table by guards because you are out of money, or burnt because you are heretic (to stick to some of your examples) are things that all have several levels of "connectedness" more than anything that you can experience in a virtual world (computers, networks, polygons, textures…). well, at least for now.
this is simply clear when we talk about an environment such as second life, but itis something that is happening, in many different ways, in other contexts of the contemporary world.
media creates virtual realities in which we get disconnected from wars, brutalities, murders, financial issues, ecological issues because of the way in which we are presented with them (a show) and by repetition.
bureocracy turns "real things" into sheets of papers (or data) that go through procedures.
the way we work is going through such a change, as well: just go o a corporate office of some kind and you'll see people that are not people at all at the workplace, but little blocks fitting inside a machinery.
production changes, turning products into services and communication, taking the material part of it all (geographically) far from our perception.
environment is far from our perception, too, as we perfectly know what's going on, but we stil continue using/doing/consuming things that we perfectly know we should not use/do/consume.
we might as well have a tag on things stating how many people have died to produce it and to bring it to us, and we'd still use it.
and we could go on with examples.
all of this can happen because we are disconnected from it all.
we know it, we listen about it, we see it on television, we read about it, yet we don't feel it.
just like if you get slain by some kind of monster on, say, world of warcraft and you go like "oh well, i got slain". because you won't bleed, hurt, die.
the post-industrial is progressively turning everything to immateriality (at least for the part of the world who can be post-industrial) and, consequently, into a virtual reality.
nothing new at all, but an enormous difference in scale, efficiency and pervasiveness.
OneAvatar is about that, taking a simple setup (me being stupid on second life with some usb-controlled electrodes and some software) to start a dialogue on the critical analisys of technologies, media and on our perception of things.

Thanks for the thoughtful & interesting response, Salvatore, especially as my comment was a tad grumpy.
I'd like to respond but today I'm sick so it'll have to wait a day or two.
cheers
michael

Salvatore
what I wanted to say was simply that I think you over-egg it somewhat ( and my quarrel is not solely with you on this but with a whole school of what one might term to greater or lesser degree 'internet-mystics'). Neither is it your work here, nor indeed your motive for it that I'm impugning ( I too deplore the loss of connectedness but this is not simply something brought about by the net, but by the political character of the last 25 -30 years in which with few exceptions the right and the market-cheerleaders have made the running).
I simply think you massively overstate the case ( and quite honestly I think to some degree you recognise that yourself) - *asserting* however vigourously and in however many words of however many syllables with however many citations that a process mediated in part by a computer is qualititively different to anything that has gone before is unfortunately not the same thing as *demonstrating* that it is - the simplest riposte is "Who attaches the electrodes?" and you can bet your life it's *not* the computer.
I remember going to see the great Trotskyist, Tony Cliff/Ygael Gluckstein speak on Orwell's '1984'.
He said "You know, when I read 1984, with the screen in every room I burst laughing. Why? Because ( and I unfortunately can't replicate his accent or manner here so I'll use caps) WHO THE BLOODY HELL BUILT THE BLOODY SCREENS? -BLOODY WORKERS OF COURSE!" Cliff's implication being that workers can and do go slow, go on strike, organise, even in the most appalling conditions. The same is true today.
That's the political point. The artistic one is the the piece would be a lot more engaging the *less* it was prefaced with the rather tendentious and, as I've argued, impressionistic and inaccurate spiel.
Give us the opportunity to relate to the products of your mischievous and fertile imagination and to allow these to bear fruit in our own without telling us in advance *what* we should be thinking!!
best wishes
michael

hi Michael

i understand your point of view and :

> I too deplore the loss of connectedness but this is
> not simply something brought about by the net, but
> by the political character of the last 25 -30 years
> in which with few exceptions the right and the
> market-cheerleaders have made the running

if you happened to take a look at what I did now and in the past you'd probably know that this is my exact point and that i know and assert that "the net" is just one of the parts of the scenery.

but i think that i don't share this part of your perspective:

> "Who attaches the electrodes?" and you can bet your life it's *not* the computer.

and

> "… WHO THE BLOODY HELL BUILT THE BLOODY SCREENS?
> -BLOODY WORKERS OF COURSE!"
> Cliff's implication being that workers can and do
> go slow, go on strike, organise, even in the most
> appalling conditions. The same is true today.

because i think it is not merely a political point, as it involves spheres that are philosophical, perceptive etcetera.

social order is a complex system, and it is based not only on will, laws, police, jobs, mortgages… it is also based on other elements that are just powerful in composing the ways in which we perceive or lives and what we want to do.
culture is not something that can be imposed by law, it is a network.
our perception of time is described in terms that are defined at several levels.
As are the things that we consider as "something we want/need to do".

so, if it is the "right" time/place/context, you will attach the electrodes, or you will not. and that goes for the workers of the story too.

and, by the way, we don't have explicit things such as a screen in every room built like in 1984, but we do have lots of things around us that serve the same purpose. things made of paper, of records in databases etcetera. or even things that do not require "someone" watching you, because they leave that task to you alltogether, their function being the one to suggesting suggesting and more suggesting.

> The artistic one is the the piece would be a lot
> more engaging the *less* it was prefaced with the
> rather tendentious and, as I've argued,
> impressionistic and inaccurate spiel.

:)

as a matter of fact i don't think of it as inaccurate and impressionistic at all!
opinable, as anything, and open for discussion is something that seems more fitting as a description.

> Give us the opportunity to relate to the
> products of your mischievous and fertile
> imagination and to allow these to bear fruit
> in our own without telling us in advance *what*
> we should be thinking!!

so that's the problem! I talk too much!

seriously: everything i do is part of a research. sometimes i like to leave things around with maybe just a link and one or two words, sometimes not, maybe feeling the need to put down a couple of paragraphs explaining (to myself or to others who are free to read it or not) what i'm up to.

the fact of the "thing" being more or less engaging or suggestive is more or less a side effect that amuses me, as my work is not in those paragraphs on the webpage or in a message sent on a newsletter, but in the ways in which i use the research in producing things in online/offline performances, works, or even in "commercial" works (i use quotes on "commercial" as I put a lot of political/aesthetic/philosophical/anthropological research into them as well). that is documentation.

so i feel not an inch guilty or unsatisfied for having written all that, and for providing you a less engaging experience ;)

my best!
s