Tales of cyber-neurosis
December 25, 2008 Leave a comment
There was a time, before I got myself a 3G phone, when posting a blog entry on Christmas Day would have made me feel like a terminally sad, internet-obsessed loser. But now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can post from the comfort of my fireside armchair, and I merely feel like a moderately sad, internet-obsessed loser.
December 22, 2008 Leave a comment
I finally succumbed to temptation and bought myself an Apple iPhone as an early Christmas present. I had been wanting to get a 3G phone for ages, but I didn’t want to sell out my open-source principles by going for a model with a proprietary OS (even if OS X is really just BSD with a custom GUI). Unfortunately the Google G1, when it finally arrived, turned out to be rubbish, and the Blackberry Storm wasn’t much better, so there was nothing for it but to swallow my pride and lock myself into the Apple universe.
I don’t feel too bad though, since it’s an undeniably smart bit of kit. I’m glad that I’m old enough to remember a time when there were no such things as mobile phones, let alone mobile phones with internet access and GPS, so I can fully appreciate just what an amazing piece of technology the iPhone is. I have all the accumulated knowledge of the human race right here in my pocket, and, even better, it can tell me where the nearest pizza restaurant is. Kids today take this sort of thing for granted, so I don’t know what it will take to impress them when they are in their forties – some kind of time-travel functionality probably, so that they can flash back to laugh at us old timers with our phone-boxes and rotary dials.
It’s some way off being perfect though. I had thought that getting a 3G phone would mean I could update this blog more frequently, using the WordPress iPhone app, but the virtual keyboard is much too fiddly for my fat fingers, making typing anything more than a few lines a chore, and the lack of a cut and paste function means that if I want to include hyperlinks I have to revert to good old pen and paper to note the address. Still, it’s good for random browsing during quiet moments, which, in theory at least, means I should come across more things to blog about, even if, like now, I have to go back to my desktop to actually write it up.
Having mobile internet access will probably mean that I spend less time in Second Life though. At the moment most of my visits occur when I have turned on my desktop on the pretext of looking at the weather forecast or some such thing, before logging into the grid for a quick run around, which usually turns into a multi-hour virtual realathon. Now I can get the same information with a couple of taps on my phone there is no way that I’ll be motivated to get off the couch in the evenings.
December 11, 2008 Leave a comment
A while ago now I purchased a door for my little house on the slopes of Heterocera, to preserve my virtual privacy. This was, as I noted at the time, completely illogical, and also somewhat hypocritical, since I am not entirely adverse to trespassing myself. At least my door is relatively polite, unlike the security systems that brusquely inform interlopers that they are on private property, before violently expelling them from the area.
The door is a scripted object that can only be opened by nominated avatars, and which also records unsuccessful attempts at ingress. This latter function had never previously been triggered, but when I logged on yesterday there was a message from the door waiting for me, containing the name of my would-be visitor.
Curious, I searched for the profile of Ms X, as I shall call her, which contained a picture of her avatar, a photograph of her real self, and a link to her blog. A few clicks later and I was in possession of her real name, more photographs, the rough location of her house, the name of her workplace, and a link to her Facebook page, which no doubt would have provided me with more of her personal details.
I stopped at this point, aware that my actions were becoming more than a little creepy, but also surprised that anyone could so casually share such information about themselves with random strangers, especially on Second Life, which I’m sure has more than its fair share of potential stalkers. (I’ll admit I have no evidence to back that up, but it’s not much of a stretch, is it?)
It set me thinking about how easy it would be to link my avatar to my real-life identity. I don’t think it can be done directly, unless of course someone had access to the details of my user account, which contains my real name and address. I guess Linden Labs would have to reveal that to anyone with a court order – in fact I know they would, since they’ve done it before (to other people, not me, yet). It wouldn’t shock me to learn that the Government (which one? any one) has secretly passed a law giving the secret police all the SL user information too. An ordinary resident couldn’t make the connection though. What they could do is relate my av to this blog, or, more likely, associate this blog with my av, and there is just enough biographical information in these posts to identify me to someone who knows me quite well. It’s an unlikely enough scenario that I won’t be worrying too much.
Enough of my paranoia though. The really intriguing question is this: why was Ms X knocking on my door? I suppose I could IM her and ask, but the answer would most likely be something boring like “I was just passing”. Better that I keep it a mystery, and wait to see if she comes back.
December 9, 2008 Leave a comment
In my high-minded discussion of the ethics of blogging I overlooked one obvious hazard of casually appropriating the private details of other people’s lives; getting sued.
That truth has found Jay Louis though, now that he’s on the receiving end of a lawsuit in connection with the book of his blog “Hot Chicks with Douchebags“. It’s interesting that he wasn’t sued over the website itself, presumably because potential plaintiffs need a defendant with some serious money, like publisher Simon & Schuster, before they can persuade a lawyer to take on the case.
I can’t see the suit succeeding, since even someone like me, whose knowledge of the US legal system is entirely based on watching “LA Law” and “Ally McBeal“, knows that the First Amendment protects the right to shower ridicule on your fellow citizens. I guess the claimants – who allege that their appearance in the book has left them needing medical treatment and psychological therapy – are hoping that S&S will settle out of court to avoid the bad publicity. (Or perhaps not; I had it in my mind that Simon and Schuster were a classy operation, but they do publish literary gems like the “Douchebag” book and “Hooking up with Tila Tequila“, so I may be mistaken).
I don’t think anyone could seriously claim that their real-life reputation was damaged by their Second Life activities appearing online, and, even if they did, I believe that Linden Labs have been doing their best to establish that Second Life disputes fall under the jurisdiction of the US courts, so I’ll be able to assert my Constitutional rights. I’m sure that James Madison would approve.
December 5, 2008 Leave a comment
Regular readers of this blog may wonder why I seldom make any mention of people I have met during my journeys around the Second Life archipelago. This is partly due to there just not being many other residents about, but I do go to busy places from time to time, and there are interesting stories to be told about the things that go on there.
What’s been holding me back are some ethical concerns; principally worries about privacy and deception.
To what extent can the Second Life grid be considered a public space? Do residents have any reasonable expectation of privacy as they go about their business? Even if you accept that your avatar’s actions may be observed by whoever happens to be around, would you be comfortable with the idea that what you do and say may be recorded, and relayed to the world in a manner over which you have no control?
It reminds of a movie that I’ve mentioned before: 1985’s “Perfect”, with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s not a great film, it’s not even a good film, but it does sort of illustrate the point I’m making. Here’s the plot, as I remember (with spoilers, in case you haven’t got round to seeing it yet). Travolta plays a writer who has been commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine to do an expose of the LA gym scene, with the slant that “gyms are the new singles bars”. He starts going to this one place, where the quirky clientele take him to their hearts, convinced he is going to reveal to the world the humanity behind the gym-bunny stereotype. He repays their faith by penning a hatchet piece that portrays them all as sex-addicted losers, but along the way he has fallen for aerobics-instructor-with-a-dark-secret Curtis, under whose influence he revises his article to introduce a more sympathetic tone. His editor prints the original version however, exposing the essentially harmless health-freaks to nationwide ridicule. Travolta makes up for it somehow, I can’t recall how, and ends up with Curtis, but the bit-players’ humiliation is not assuaged.
Times have changed since the 80’s of course, and you could argue that, in our reality-entertainment-soaked age, everyone knows, or should know, that life is a performance, with potentially the whole world as an audience if you’re lucky, or unlucky, depending how you look at it. If you choose to create a new identity on the grid then you are implicitly accepting that your alter ego will be open to public scrutiny.
Anyway, privacy concerns can be dealt with on a technical level, by the anonymisation that is built in to Second Life , which I could enhance by never mentioning names or places, and keeping descriptions vague, though that would lessen the verisimilitude a bit.
Nevertheless I still feel a bit uncomfortable with the concept of appropriating others’ experience for my art (if that’s not too pretentious), though I guess it’s what storytellers have been doing since the first raconteur related the amusing tale of Ug and the sabre-tooth tiger. What anonymisation doesn’t deal with is the fact that it is largely impossible to be a passive observer in Second Life; to see what is really going on you have to be part of the action, and that raises the second ethical concern that I mentioned: deception.
I know that the concept of the neutral observer has been out of fashion since the days of Schrödinger and his cat, and practically every feature you read in a magazine these days is written by a would-be successor to Hunter S. Thompson, but the level of duplicity possible in SL completely blurs the distinction between reporting a story and creating it. Inducing someone to invest emotional energy in an interaction that is based on dishonesty – about my identity, and about my motivation – feels a bit exploitative, but the alternative – admitting up front that I’m only interested in meeting people so that I can blog about it – would, I suspect, make me a virtual pariah.
Does any of this really matter? It’s not like this project is a piece of serious research – it would never get past any reputable ethics committee – and I doubt anyone’s feelings will be terribly hurt if they happen to recognise themselves in my ramblings, in the unlikely event that they stumble across them. Maybe I can justify stretching my principles a little, so long as the end product is worth reading.
November 26, 2008 Leave a comment
I remember being a bit worried when Linden Labs announced their crackdown on unauthorised use of their trademarks. Since then though I’ve observed numerous other blogs brazenly flouting the regulations, some, like Your2ndPlace, breaking several rules at once without suffering any consequences, so I figured that LLabs weren’t going to be stupid enough to alienate their user base by suing the very people who were publicising their product.
Once the trademark issue had been raised though, it was only a matter of time before lawyers got involved. I hope that this case will establish that LLabs’ attempt to appropriate two of the commonest word in the English language is doomed to failure.
October 18, 2008 Leave a comment
I’ve had a good October on the blog; posting regularly, and traffic way up. Now I’m off on vacation for a while, so it’ll probably be back to my usual slacker pace when I return.
October 10, 2008 Leave a comment
Second Life Shrink was featured in the Guardian’s “Letters and blogs” column this week, quoting the comment I made about Vic Keegan’s article on how the financial crisis will affect virtual worlds.
This hasn’t boosted my traffic much – two hits have come via this link so far, according to my stats page – but it’s always nice to know that someone, even an anonymous sub-editor, thinks my writing is worth a mention.
Second Life Shrink 