Cyber Culture and the Virtual Worlds - Essay Example

Cyber Culture and the Virtual Worlds Introduction In the modern world of technological advancements, the concept of the world itself is changed. There exists a real factual world which determines the action and feelings of every human life. In the traditional concept of the world, one is familiar only with the existence of this true world and any other world that was possible meant something that existed outside oneself in the world of fantasies, dreams, and the unattainable. The adults and teenagers of the new generation have the possibility of experiencing the world of fantasies or the dream world in a more conceivable realm in the form of virtual worlds. This is mainly possible through the development in the new digital and internet communication and communities. “The lessons of computers today have to do not with calculation and rules, but with simulation, navigation, and interaction. The very image of computer as a giant calculator has become a quaint and dated… Today they use the shelf products to manipulate the simulated desktops, draw with simulated paints and brushes, and fly in the simulated airplane cockpits.” (Turkle, 1995, p 238). Most significantly, we need to identify the emergence of a cyber culture which widens the scope for this virtual world existence. Many often we identify the characteristics of popular culture in the cyber culture. “Like all forms of culture, cyber-culture is, in part, a product of the stories we tell about it. Indeed the tales we tell over coffee, read in Wired, Newsweek, and The New York Times, and watch in movies like The Net, The Matrix, and The Disclosure, inform the ways in which we engage in cyber culture.” (Silver, p.26). One of the most recognizable results of this culture is the creation of a cyberspace which provides opportunity for you to be in a creative virtual world in which you can assume any avatar you like or cover up any inability or limitation you experience in the real life. In this essay, we discuss the characteristics of such virtual world existence and the life of avatars in two parts and identify some of the differences between the virtual world existence and the real world experience. Thus, “cyber culture is best comprehended as a series of negotiations that take place both online and off.” (Silver, p.30). Part 1: The Avatar An avatar is “a Sanskrit word originally referring to the visible forms adopted by Hindu gods to represent themselves in this, our lesser, mortal world. Online cultures nicked the term to name the digital forms that represent us in virtual worlds… We fall in love there. We lust for power and for wealth. We seek adventure and escape from the tedium of our more enduring, realer lives.” (Cooper, 2007). Thus, like any other person of my age, I have also experienced the joy of becoming an avatar and here that experience will be narrated. The avatar I assumed was to correspond to my real life. Therefore, I chose to create the avatar with most of my characteristics though my inabilities were covered with the extra powers of my avatar. It is to incorporate all my natural kindness and generosity and the wish to help the needy in my mental faculty that I created the avatar of my choice. Thus, the creation of my avatar was based on my wish to help the humanity and with this aim I enhanced it with all the powers and strength possible. My new avatar is my profile in facebook. Facebook being a social networking site is a virtual world/community/society with a large number of populations. This virtual world has actually given me a platform to portray myself as a different person. I love to interact with more and more people. But in the real life my interaction with people is restricted. I have a friends’ network of those who study in my class and my neighbors. I love to talk to people and be more into the matters that worry them. Thus I like to suggest solutions for their worries. I wish that by doing this I’ll have more friends and I’ll get a recognizable role in my friends’ group. Though these are my wishes I was unable to attain them because of my very limited network of friends. Another reason is that I hardly meet people with problems. Most of the people in my friends’ network are the one that leads a very happy life. But one I created my new avatar in the facebook I started interacting with people of different backgrounds. I started connecting my network with the persons who are the friends of my friends. I was able to become friendlier with those people who face one or other problems. They felt free to share those with me. I started achieving my wishes which I was not able to achieve in my real world. Thus in this virtual world I’m a person who I’m not. I realized a change in my attitude. This transformed my whole out look. Changes started happening in my real life too. Now I’m more into the psychological aspects of a human being. All these are the unexpressed desires of my real life seeking some vindication through my avatar. Cyber culture, as we comprehend, is the life experience of the online existence as well as that of the offline. My avatar is partly the extension of my real self and partly the realization of the self that is unattainable for me in my offline life. There are certain differences between my avatar identity and the offline self of the college student in me. However, on the general analysis, both these identities have much in common such as the need for social recognition, the wish to be a hero among the neighbors and the students, the liking for the admiration by cute girls, and the like. I comprehend the actions of my avatar self as my unconscious effort to realize my inner thirst in the real life. The avatar identity that I assume has several other similarities to my offline identity. Most significantly, my avatar identity reflects the characteristics and behavior specialties of my offline identity. For example, as a college student I have always been recognized as one of the rare students who cultivate a habit of making use of every opportunity to help the fellow students, engage in socially useful programs, and assist the local authorities in implementing their duties by self-observing the rules and regulations. I also encourage others to follow similar ways that make them socially useful citizens and in this way, in my friend circles, I am often regarded as a social citizen helping others and considering the well being of all. In the similar passion, my avatar identity also becomes a socially relevant person and I feel that it is the reflection of my unconscious wish to be socially useful citizen that is reflected in the character of my avatar identity. Similarly, there is apparent similarity between my avatar identity and student identity in the fact that both the identities wish to be heroes among others. My student identity wish eagerly to be the hero in any situation and this is very well expressed by the similar thirst of my avatar identity. Therefore, I can very well guarantee that most of the characteristics of one’s avatar identity is determined by that of his/her real life, offline identity. Part 2: My experiences with the virtual world Cyberspace or virtual world may be best defined as a “new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world’s computers and communication lines. A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainments, and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presence never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic night.” (Benedikt, p.29). “William Gibson (1984) famously coined the term ‘cyberspace’ in his groundbreaking novel Neuromancer: ‘Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators… A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.” (Silver, p 21). My experience of moving around the virtual world in the avatar identity has been so marvelous that I eagerly wait for every opportunity to be online. The interaction with every other avatar in the virtual world gives me the utmost happiness as I always get the satisfaction of doing the right thing at the right time. There is much more satisfaction than just playing some mere game. “The self is no longer simply playing different roles in different settings at different times. The life practice of windows is that of a de-centered self that exists in many worlds that plays many roles at the same time.” Now real life itself may be, as one of Turkle’s subjects says, “just one more window.” (Turkle, 1995, p 237). It has been a correct observation made by Turkle. The finding of Turkle in her examination of the burgeoning cyberspace lives of children and teenagers is worth mentioning and it makes clear that “the Internet links millions of people in new spaces that are changing the way we think and the way we form our communities. That we are moving from “a modernist culture of calculation toward a postmodern culture of simulation.” That life on the screen permits us to “project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and the star…. Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual. We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, and identity.” (Turkle, 1995, p 237). The virtual world and the avatar identity have great significance in the modern world. Now, “we are in an unusual position to appreciate remediation, because of the rapid development of new digital media and the nearly as rapid response by traditional media. Older electronic and print media are seeking to reaffirm their status within our culture as digital media challenge that status. Both new and old media are invoking the twin logics of immediacy and hypermediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other.” (Bolter and Grusin, 1999, pp.3-11; and 160-167). It is particularly notable that the avatars provide you with great opportunity to cover up your limitations and assume the position of your choice. Therefore, it has tremendous impact on the psychological remedial measures of the self. “Your avatar can look anyway you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you’re ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you’ve just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied make up. You can look a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend five minutes walking down the street and you will see all of these.” (Stephenson, 1992, p.33-34). This is one of the better strategies of healing the self. It is the fulfillment of all the unconscious dreams of your real self and can work for the solace of your mind. This was especially felt by my experience in the virtual world contrasted with that of my real self. There are two existences to a person who lives in the virtual as well as real world. It is rightly pointed out by the stranger in the Snow Crash in the dialogue with Hiro the avatar. “And it doesn’t make sense anyway. “That’s a hypercard. I thought you said Snow Crash was a drug,” Hiro says, now totally nonplussed. “It is,” the guy says. “Try it.” “Does it fuck up your brain?” Hiro says. “Or your computer?” “Both. Neither. What’s the difference?” (Stephenson, 1992, p 41). As we rightly understand the cyberspace or the virtual world has grown much more than just a means of communication to become a specific world itself. To some of the scholars, “cyberspace is not only a space for communication and community but also a generator of discourse, a very real and very imagined place where a variety of interests claim its origins, its myths and its future directions. As many third generation cyber culture studies scholars have noted, two disturbing discourses of cyberspace have emerged: the net as frontier and cyberspace as boys-town.” (Silver, p 26). The modern world is much complicated and people of new generation find various types of identities. Thus, “unlike traditional society in which people only have a narrow range of ascribed identities, in late modern society we are usually offered a bewildering range of choices over social and cultural identities, including those based on gender identity, nationality, religion, family relationships, sexuality, occupation, leisure interests, political concerns, and more.” (Cheung, 2004, p 59). These are examples of multiple and contradictory identities. In another situation, “late-modern society is always undergoing rapid and extensive change, and accordingly, our lives and sense of stable self-identity are prone to disruption more than ever.” (Cheung, p.59). This situation results in disrupted lives which is another type of identity. In stigmatized identities, “we may be doubtful about certain identities of ours if these identity categories are controversial, stigmatized or unacceptable in society at large.” (Cheung, p.59). In a world with such variant identities, the people soon find themselves in complex situation and the virtual world becomes a great hope for their self realization. It is the same feeling that I enjoyed in my experience in the virtual world. In the evaluation of the virtual world and its similarities and differences with the real world, it may be remarked that the virtual world, though gives an extended world of the reality, cannot always be seen as a blessing. There is always a feeling that it is after all an imaginary world where the real self not at all dwells. There is always a distinction between the online identities and offline identities, even after an intensive desire for dwelling in the virtual world. Let us be aware that “like every story ever told or sung, a mental geography of sorts has existed in the living mind of every culture, a collective memory or hallucination, an agreed-upon territory of mythical figures, symbols rules, and truths, owned and traversable by all who learned its ways, and yet free of the bounds of physical space and time.” (Benedikt, pp.29-30). Therefore, we can rightly conclude that there is greater possibility for the growth of the cyber culture or the virtual worlds. In conclusion, it may be remarked that there is a growing culture of the cyberspace. The distribution power of the internet is especially remarkable in the modern world and in this background the social networking sites may be considered. They are sites “that allow the participants to interact and upload their own content.” (Galvin, 2006, pp.16-17). Such social networking sites give more evidence to the popularity of interactive programs like the games and to the scope of the concept of virtual world. We can comprehend that the cyber culture has a greater reach in the modern culture and the scope of the virtual world to expand is great. Works Cited Turkle, S. Who Am We? in Trend, D. (ed.) (2001). Reading Digital Culture, Malden, Mass: Blackwell, pp.236-250. 1995. Silver, D. "Introducing Cyberculture,"in Gauntlett, D. (ed.) (2000) Web. Stufies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age, Oxford University Press. pp.19-30. Cooper, R. Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators, London: Chris Boot [selected pages + introduction by Julian Dibbell. 2007. Benedikt, M. Cyberspace: First Steps (excerpt) in Bell and Kennedy (eds.) (2000). The Cybercultures Reader, Routledge: London. pp.29-30. Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. ROC: London. pp.33-41. 1992. Cheung, C. "Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages: Emancipatory Potentials and Reality Constraints" in Gauntlett, D. (ed.) (2000). Web Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age, Oxford University Press. pp. 53-68) 2004. Galvin, N. "Caught in the Act" SMH, pp.16-17. Sep. 2006. Bolter. J. D. & Grusin, R. A. Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge, Mass; London: MIT Press. pp.3-11 and 160-167. 1999. Read More