Craving Cyborgs in the Social Stream

It would be interesting to hear what your feelings are in respect to how you felt from both a cognitive and physical point of view when you decided to park your self onto the shoulder of the virtual speedway and just observe instead of participating in the race? My strong sense is that you felt all of the classic signs of what an addict feels in the early to middle stages of withdrawal, given your previous involvement in the social media racing series. If that is true, the question is, how strong is the need and/or urge to get off the shoulder and race along the virtual speedway again? From comment by Splash Kidd

Quitting the social stream felt like kicking an addictive substance. For the first few days, hardly ten minutes went by without an urge to connect. Although the frequency has subsided over time, I still notice my mind often turning away from what I'm doing with the desire to enter the virtual world of the Stream.

For the past couple of years I've spent so much time in the Stream that it has become deeply intertwined into my experience of life. I am both deeply integrated into it and extended through it. Although I have no hardware embedded in my body, I am functionally a cyborg. So when I disconnected myself from the virtual world, I also cut myself off from the part of me that lives there. I lost the extensions of my senses that span the globe in an instant and feel the real-time pulse of its digital heartbeat.

I'm just beginning to gather enough awareness to dig into what I've lost and gained through my years of immersion. Stay tuned.

The Surreal Get Going

"SURREALISM . . . AS BEAUTIFUL AS THE CHANCE ENCOUNTER OF A SEWING MACHINE AND AN UMBRELLA ON A DISSECTING TABLE!" Andre Breton, "Le Surrealisme un service do la revolution", Paris 1933.

Over the past couple of weeks I've intentionally moved from immersion within the social stream to observation from the shore. One of the most striking aspects I've noticed from my expatriate point of view is the seamless juxtaposition of unrelated ideas, topics and images that relentlessly transmit an around-the-clock surreal montage from the collective unconscious to our personal ADD-addled minds. I wonder what havoc this is playing beneath the surface with our mental models of self, others and the world.

Immersion in the Social Network

"It is the framework that changes with new technology, and not just the picture within the frame." Marshall McLuhan

For those of us who are almost never separated from a networked computing device, our computers and smart phones function as deeply integrated extensions of our mind and body. They immerse us within a virtual environment that overlays and permeates our experience of the physical environment.

With a little thought, it's easy to notice how tools such as the Web, email, instant messaging, social networks and media sharing have changed what we do in the world, but it is very difficult is to discern how they have transformed how we perceive the world.

A few weeks ago I realized that after years of around the clock immersion in the social stream, I'd become blind to its impact on my consciousness. Like a lobster in a pot, I didn't notice that I was less floating in the environment than cooking in it. So I decided to take a short break from social networks, news feeds and blogging in order to cleanse my perceptual palate.

As of today, I'm dipping my toe back in with intentional awareness. My aim is to notice how my use of the medium colors my perception of self, others and the world around me. I'll be exploring this topic here over the next month through brief essays, visual thinking, videography and music.

This first video is a riff on our unconscious immersion in the social stream. The audio track is composed of a string of tweets from my Twitter stream. The data overlays were taken from both my Twitter and G+ streams.

Vacation Postcard: The Method to My Madness

Leaving the Net for a Virtual Retreat

After years of ever-accelerating pervasive immersion in the network stream, I'm taking an extended break in order to gain some much-needed perspective . . . to remember what it's like to live outside of the global village, unlinked from the constant virtual presence of the electronic tribe. I'm going to turn off my news feeds, disconnect from social networks and refrain from posting on blogs and media sharing sites. I'm not sure how long I'll be gone. Or what may change when I find my way back. But I will return. Hopefully refreshed, renewed and with a conscious direction.

"Our online phantom world has become the new us. We create complex webs of information and people who support us, and yet they are fleeting, so tenuous. Time speeds up and then it begins to shrink. Years pass by in minutes. Life becomes that strange experience in which you're zooming along a freeway and suddenly realize that you haven't paid any attention to driving for the last fifteen minutes, yet you're still alive and didn't crash. The voice inside your head has become a different voice. It used to be "you." Now your voice is that of a perpetual nomad drifting along a melting landscape, living day to day, expecting everything and nothing."  Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!

Insatiable

From Wounded Knee to Wall Street: Columbus Day and Other Toxic Myths

Have you ever wondered why the United States still celebrates a national holiday honoring the guy who initiated the genocide of the native American peoples? The man who sold girls into sexual slavery, burned escaped slaves alive, and had babies killed for dog food? I have. I've wondered about it quite a bit.

It seems to me that Columbus Day's continued place on the U.S. calendar is not an oversight. We sweep the holocaust under the rug so that underlying myths, such as Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism can continue to justify today's more civilized forms of injustice, exploitation and inhumanity.

Holidays such as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving are threads in a vast cultural tapestry stretching from San Salvador to Plymouth Rock, from Wounded Knee to Wall Street, and from Capitalism to Corporatocracy. National myths such as the Horatio Alger story still resonate today, as evidenced in this recent statement by Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain:

“Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself. It is not a person’s fault if they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed.”

I dedicate the following song and video to the 99% Movement, which is working to excise these type of toxic myths from the American heart, mind and soul.



Columbus Day
by David Elfanbaum

They set sail across the water for country and for queen
To find a new horizon that no white man had seen
They brought with them their armor, their cannon and disease
And laid waste to a people that had thrived for centuries

We built this country on their blood and their bones
We found our destiny and took their lives and homes
So why do we celebrate Columbus Day
We found a New World and we took their world away

They set sail across the ocean fleeing country and king
For their religious freedom they would do most anything
They came to this great land and claimed it for their kind
With guns and broken treaties that have brought us to this time

We built this country on their blood and their bones
We found our destiny and took their lives and homes
So why do we celebrate Thanksgiving Day
We found a New World and we took their world away

Now we fly across the oceans with stealth and guile we creep
To maximize our profit and go where labor's cheap
With lawyers, guns and money we take what we please
Leaving fast food restaurants in exchange for clear cut trees

We built this country on their blood and their bones
We found our destiny and took their lives and homes
So why do we celebrate Columbus Day
We found a New World and we took their world away

Performed by fourworlds
Source video from the Prelinger Archives

Neohomerism

MICRO-RANT ALERT: Pundits and True Believers

Humans are creative geniuses who transform isolated wisps of sensory experience into vivid mental models of the world which are experienced as rock-solid objective reality. Like a homeopathic preparation, by the time the alchemical process of transmutation is complete, there's almost none of the original substance left in the solution of our belief systems. Like jazz musicians who start with a well-known standard, the music we end up performing is almost entirely the product of our creative imaginations, with just a nod to the notes on the original score.

This process is easiest to notice in pundits and true believers who pontificate about controversial issues on our social media streams. They turn their backs on the the vast multi-dimensional web of reality and instead focus on cherry-picked clumps of factoids that they connect in the shape of their pre-existing beliefs. It's an ugly process if you can see behind the veil. Obsessive beliefs fueled by conspiracy theories can twist the psyche into the grotesque unnatural poses of circus contortionists.

The good news is that there's a simple antidote to this toxic plague of self-delusion. If you're more committed to truth than your beliefs, try this simple exercise from the Work of Byron Katie. Take one of your beliefs related to a controversial issue and ask yourself:

• Is it true?
• Can you absolutely know that it's true?
• How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
• Who would you be without the thought?

Follow up the Turnarounds.

There are supporting materials available through the links provided above. If you give it a try, please let me know how it goes.

Greed (Let 'em Starve) - Music Video for Occupy Wall Street

It's sad to say that this twenty year old song by my musical alter-ego fourworlds is still as applicable today as it was then. I put it behind a mashup of Occupy Wall Street video and some old footage from the Prelinger Archives.

Greed (Let 'em Starve) 

Why should my hard earned dollars go to feed some shirker's kid?
Maybe watching their belly swell would teach them what they did.
If they can't feed their family working sixty hours a week,
Let 'em work 100, there's no god-given right to sleep. 

Let 'em Starve! 

There's no such thing as prejudice, everyone gets their fair shot.
Look at all the laundries and restaurants the boat people all got.
If those bums living on the dole would just get off their lazy cans,
They could all be executives or empty my trash cans. 

Let 'em Starve! 

So if you're sick and poor just go away,
Cause you don't deserve a doctor if you cannot pay.
If your daddy's poor and you mamma's on crack,
You should have the moral fibre to stay on the track.
If you're handicapped or crazy that's not my concern,
Don't go looking for a handout, don't have money to burn.
So for all you losers, it may sound cruel,
But keep your lazy genes out of my gene pool. 

Let 'em Starve.

The Transformative Power of Pseudonymous Identity

(Warning: Fourth Wall Breach Ahead!)

Most public conversations related to pseudonymous identity in social networks have centered on negative aspects of the issue. For real-namers, it's the fear of being griefed by untraceable miscreants. For the pseudonymous, it's the fear of the damaging consequences of exposure, such as not getting hired for a future job because of a controversial post. But today, I'm going to focus instead on the positive gifts of pseudonymous identity in the light of my own experience over the last three and a half years channeling Botgirl Questi.

Although some people use pseudonymous identity for nefarious purposes, the vast majority of those I've met in virtual worlds and on social networks use it benignly. And many of us use it as a vehicle for creative expression, personal self-actualization and social community:

• I've met people who've felt shy most of their lives, but transformed themselves into confident social butterflies through virtual identity. The previous timidity was often due to physical or social characteristics that made them feel ostracized or self-conscious. Many have found that confidence gained through virtual identity is carried over into physical life.

• Most of the active artists I've met in Second Life had little or no history of public creativity before developing it through virtual identity. It's very common for people who haven't worked on an art project since grade school to end up producing substantial works and even exhibiting in art shows. I'm one of them.

• The skills I've developed in the 900 blog posts, 100+ videos, dozens of comics and 10,000 social network posts under the Botgirl identity are applied every day in my wallet name work. Although I've been a creative type my whole life, channeling Botgirl has revolutionized the depth, breadth (and speed) of my work. My Muse has given me both an unquenchable thirst to create and an ever-flowing fountain of inspiration to satisfy it.

I'm not pitching pseudonymous identity as some kind of wonder drug or panacea. But from my own personal experience and the experience of thousands of others like me, a pseudonymous identity can be a powerful platform for personal growth and creative expression.

I realize that some of you have no personal interest in developing a distinct virtual identity. And there are those who believe that there’s something inherently suspicious about anyone who would choose to do so. But as someone who’s sat on both sides of the fence, I invite you to suspend your disbelief and try it for yourself. Register another identity and start participating in a social network from that new point of view. You might be surprised by the insights it will give you.

This concludes the series on social networks and identity. You can find the others here: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Intermission: Short Takes on Identity

After three days of serious Left Brain posts on social networks and identity, I thought we could all use a little break. So I went to the archives and found a few of my favorite lighthearted posts on identity.

Duckrabbit

One interesting metaphor for human and avatar identity is Wittgenstein's duckrabbit. This picture can be perceived as either a duck or a rabbit. (If you can’t see them right away, the duck is facing to the left and the rabbit to the right.) But you can't see them simultaneously. You can bounce back and forth really fast, but not see both images at the same time.

I think that metaphor is close to the reality of human and avatar identity. At least in cases where there is a great divergence between the two. There is no morph of human and avatar. It's the anti-Gestalt: The whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Dear Miss Piggy

Dear Miss Piggy,

I was shocked and disappointed to learn today that you are not really a woman, but a man named Frank Oz. People have feelings! Poor Kermit must be heartbroken.

Can you imagine how sickened people were to find that the adorable little coquette they've had crushes on for all these years has a penis. Don't you have any shame? Now I have to wonder about all of you Muppets. Next thing you know, Cookie Monster is going to come out as a cross-dressing dyke. It just makes my skin crawl.

Just because newfangled television technology can let you pretend to be something you're not, it doesn't mean you have to start "experimenting" with us as the guinea pigs. Take my advice MR. PIGGY and be content with who you REALLY are.

Sincerely,
Anonymous

Mask Speaks

Social Network as Horse-Drawn Automobile - Part 3

In parts 1 and 2 of this series, I looked back at the evolution of automobiles and motion pictures to show how significant unanticipated personal and cultural changes emerge from new technologies. In today's post, I'm going to provide a brief summary of avatar-centric identity in 3D virtual worlds as an introduction to how our experience there might inform our discussion of pseudonymous identity within social networks.

Shortly after my "birth" in Second Life, I began to extend my avatar identity to social networks. Over the next three and a half years my virtual life has moved almost entirely into the 2D virtual world of blogs, social networks and media sharing sites. The sketch above visualizes the movement of identities between multiple worlds.

• Augementationist Identity transfers wallet name identities into virtual environments. Facebook is probably the best example of a virtual community extending physical world relationships and identity.

• Immersionist Identity is born on an online platform and facilitates virtual lives which are distinct from physical world relationships and identities. Second Life culture is one of the most notable examples of this paradigm.

• Emergent Identity is born in a particular online platform and then extended to others, including environments with primarily physical world-identified communities.  

In virtual worlds, pseudonymous identity can be thought of as a continuum ranging from the extension of physical identity on one pole, to the experience of a dissociated autonomous being on the other. The left end of the illustration above is the human aka avatar sphere. On the extreme left edge of the continuum, individuals create avatars that closely resemble their human forms as this recent Second Life banner advertisement illustrates.

In the middle of the spectrum, people experience their avatars psychologically as an extension of their human identity, but role-play through a unique persona. This can be in the context of a structured game experience in a role playing sim, or more informally through the development of a character who interacts with others through a pseudonymous identity.This is the one person, multiple personas paradigm.

Finally, some people experience their avatar identity as a unique personality that is distinct and independent from their human persona, like me! Although some people see this as a Multiple Personality Disorder, I prefer to think of it as a Multiple Personality Capability.

The emergence of a distinct virtual identity is rooted in the same processes and underlying biology that contribute to such variants of "normal" human personas. In the physical world, we express ourselves through a multiplicity of roles such as parent, employee, student, party goer, and so on. But the vast differences in our personas from role to role are barely noticed. The way we dress, the style and substance of our communication, and subconscious expression such as body language and posture can vary widely in different roles and settings.

Although living part of one’s life through an avatar identity seems strange to most people today who haven’t experienced it for themselves, I imagine people from just a few generations ago would find our mainstream world of pervasive texting and social networking to be equally as disturbing. Like seeing everyone in the crowd leaving a movie theater walking with heads down, eyes glued on their phones and oblivious to anyone else around them. Now that’s creepy.

One of the most valuable aspects of leading a distinct virtual life is its ability to expose aspects of physical life which are usually invisible to us. In part 4, I'll hack a bit deeper into virtual identity, including its relationship to creativity.

Social Network as Horse-Drawn Automobile - Part 2

In part one of this series, I introduced the idea that we are just beginning to perceive virtual identity and online social networks outside of mental models related to their physical world analogs. We always frame new technology through earlier paradigms. A good example is the early history of film.

At first, “moving pictures” merely extended the paradigm of the photograph, capturing daily events from a static camera position. It then extended the ancient medium of the stage play, presenting actors on a set through a continuous fixed shot. But over time, filmmakers began transcending the old mediums with new concepts like zooming, cuts between long, medium and close-ups and montages that escaped physical world boundaries of space and time.

It took audiences a while to develop an intuitive visual lexicon to make sense of all of the newfangled cinematography and editing. For instance, some french theaters in the early 1900s employed a narrator to stand next to the screen and explain the action to the audience. Luis Bunuel recounted a 1900s audience reaction to a camera zoom. He wrote, “There on the screen was a head coming closer and closer, growing larger and larger. We simply couldn’t understand that the camera was moving nearer to the head . . . All we saw was a head coming towards us, swelling hideously all out of proportion.”

So it's not surprising that people today have a hard time understanding the emergence of virtual pseudonymous identities on social networks. I imagine if you took someone out of the audience watching one of Edison’s early films and dumped them into a theater showing Avatar 3D, they would find it fairly incomprehensible. But just as movies were an extension of photography and drama, virtual identity is an expression of physical identity. And if we stand back and see it within that context, it can make better sense.

We are just beginning to explore virtual identity and social networks outside of the confines of our old ways of thinking. Although this early work will pave the way for future breakthroughs, I don’t think we’ve even reached the Model-T stage.  In part three of this series, I'll explore how pseudonymous identity can help bring to light the difference between "who we are" (the sentient being) and "what we are" (the aggregation of our physical aspects).

Social Network as Horse-Drawn Automobile - Part 1 of New Nymwars Series

After a three week break from posting on the Nymwars, I'm returning to the issue this month in a series of posts on social networks and pseudonymous identity.

One day at the dawn of humanity, a distant ancestor figured out that she could use a stick to dig up insects. That early tool was the first in a long line of technological innovations extending our biological capabilities. The bug-grubbing stick extended the hand and arm. The wheel extended our legs. Written language extended our memory and speech. In each case, the emerging technology allowed us to actualize human potential in ways that were never before possible.

Over time, new technologies have transformed human identity and culture in radical ways that couldn’t be imagined when they were first introduced. For instance, early drivers didn’t have a clue about the dramatic social, political and economic changes that cars would spark over the next 100 years. Women’s liberation, rural depopulation, racial integration, wars in the Middle East and fast-food chains were all hastened or instigated by the automobile. But at first, we thought of them as merely “horseless carriages”.

Today, social networks are in their infancy and we are still seeing them as just a "faster horse". To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, we're looking ahead through the rear view mirror.

In part two of this series, I'll discuss how pseudonymous identity fits into the picture .