ephemerology - n. - the study of the unreal

It’ll take a bit to get to my point here, but bear with me. I think that one of the problems with how people react to the modenr world is that they make assumptions about what the progress brings us. Moon’s First Law of Sociology is “Human nature only changes in response to new technology.” And I think that too often, we look at these things not from the standpoint of understanding what we are becoming, but rather through the lens of what made sense in the past

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Let’s pair up a few personal experiences here. Just recently, I posted on a blog about finding more people to hang out with, both offline and online. My goal is to become more sociable (a skill I’ve lost some in the last few years). I did say I wanted to know if people wanted to do online stuff with me as well, especially local people, so we could hang out online and offline.  One of the responses I got was someone saying that looking for people to hang out with me online was defeating the purpose of trying to cultivate sociability.

My response was based mostly around the fact that some of my hobbies are specifically online hobbies. I enjoy virtual worlds and Internet technologies, among other things. So I want to enjoy those with other people, both locally and remotely. (As an aside, I’m a big believer in the idea taht if you want to develop friends or find dating partners, you should do it while enjoing your other hobbies. I think you are far more likely to find someone compatible).

I think this exchange highlights one of the big paradoxes of the Internet Age: The Internet is becoming a cornerstone of modern cultures on many levels, and yet we usually consider what we do on the net as trivial. An example of this: MC Lars (who is really a geeky musician and often associated with the niche nerdcore genre) has a song “Internet Relationships are Not Real”. Yet, I met my wife of 10 years on the Internet. I know a lot of people who have forged long-term relationships online. But it’s still considered ‘strange’.

Of course, that’s a lot anecdotal evidence. So let’s bring in some science. In the Journal of Communications, there’s a paper called “Looking for Gender: Gender Roles and Behaviors Among Online Gamers” (http://dmitriwilliams.com/LFGpaperfinal.pdf). I found this quote in the middle of it, where they are talking about the fact thatthey found that, unexpectedly, women who play online games play more hours than men who do. Their suggestion is that women use it as an avenue for social interaction. (emphasis mine)

The desire for communication could in part have been met through game play with romantic partners and/or relatives, suggesting that MMOs may allow (especially younger female) players greater opportunities to communicate with friends/family outside of normal routines. [...] If true, this pattern would be consistent with the general trend in Internet research to find online activities to be more of an extension of offline life,

for example, a maintenance tool, than a substitute for it.

So here’s the point I am finally getting to: science is beginning to show that online activities aren’t overall, escapism. Rather they are an extension of a person’s life. And I think that this is one of the key things that will come out of the generations that grow up with the Internet, that the ‘virtual’ world is just way to extend who you are. The future isn’t Extropian transcendentalism, where we shuffle off this mortal coil for the digital aether. Rather it is bolting on the reach the digital age gives us onto who we are.

The future isn’t virtual reality, but rather augmented identity.

We are human and we are always going to be. But what we can do changes with technology. Like augmented reality uses technology to ‘extend’ what you can do/see/interact with, augmented identity is where who we are is extended through the avenue of technology.

What is augmented identity like?

* Decentralized social identity – the people in our life don’t have to be close by. People keep up with friends and family all over the world through email and social media. You don’t have to run into a person on a regular basis in order to be informed on their life. Of course, there’s nothing like real face-to-face interaction. But it seems like now that is being extended by socializing in ‘the cloud’.

* Simultaneous multichannel communication – my father-in-law mentioned to me recently that he noticed how in IM conversations, you often have two threads of discussion going on at once, as people respond out of sync to one another. He said you get used to it. Because of the Internet, texting and IM have made this commonplace and reflexive for some. It’s an asynchronous way of communicating – we communicate in little bursts here and there and hop back and forth between them quickly. Conversations are happening interwoven with each other and thus effectively simultanously. And it happens across multiple media as well – having IM conversations while on the phone or talking to someone in the room with you. This is second nature to those who grew up with it. And I think that’s the source of the frustration older people have with younger people texting while having conversations while the younger people really don’t understand what the fuss is about. Multichannel communication is natural for the internet type, but not for the pre-digital person.

* Multidimensionality of self – another favorite of mine. Augmented identity acknowledges the fact that people have more dimensions to them than usually gets expressed. There has always been this human experience (I act differently when I am at work as opposed to when I am at home) and some more real life ways (see the SCA). But the extension into the virtual allows people to express these parts of themself in ways that couldn’t otherwise. Second Life is, I think, one of the prototypical examples of that now. Culture in second life has evolved into several noticable ‘virtual races’ (neko, vampire, furry, dragon, etc.), virtual genders (shemale, hermaphrodites) and even virtual ethnicities (Gor, Uru, and more). While there is roleplaying in all of this, if you look, you find that these are real people adopting personas and customs as an expression of who they are. That person may not be physically a black skinned drow with cat ears, but does the fact that they present themselves as such make it any less a part of who they are?