Coming of Age in Secondlife – Chapter 9
Dec 9th, 2008 by nmsliwa
I realized quite a while ago that Second Life is two words and not one. Yet, I can’t stop writing it as one word. I remembered today as I began this page to title it as two but I am someone who enjoys order and couldn’t bring myself to disturb the other eight pages which write Second Life as one word. Oh well.
Chapter 9 is the final chatper of Tom Boellstorff’s book, Coming of Age in Second Life (two words). It is also the shortest chapter and yet perhaps the most important. I suggest that it is the most important chapter because it is the culmination of the first eight. The ninth chapter, simply titled “The Virtual”, brings together all of the ideas the Boellstorff has discussed in teh last 230+ pages of the book and adds final comments to such topics as the virtual human, culture, design, and anthopology (Boellstorff,p. 237). Not surprisingly, these topics which permeate the final chapter of Boellstorff’s work are also what we are to comment on in the final group papers which my group and I are currently writing.
In the early pages of chapter nine Boellstorff says, “humans are always crafting themselves through culture, they have always been virtual” (Boellstorff, p.237). I found this quote particualry fascinating because I too have been recently interested in the way in which virtual, cultural, and technological lines have crossed. At the beginning of the semester I was asked to choose a technology to study and observe. I choose the cell phone and yet over the past several weeks my attention has been turned to a newer form of technology which has permeated aspects of my cultural identity to an extent which I was not even aware.
It was first brought to my attention during a conversation I was having with my boyfriend over when we started dating. He claims we started dating on the 17th, however I instisted it was the 27th. When he asked me why I felt it was the 27th I told him that that was the day we made it “Facebook official.” All of a sudden I realized, this technology, which is only four years old is a tool for mediating identities just as Second Life is. Although one does not create virtual avatars in Facebook one is still representing a version of oneself and one is still responsible for the same social confines of the real world – even with confines as simple as “single” or “attached”.
Boellstorff’s observations about the virtual world of Second Life’s ability to virtually mediate identities and provide a world where one may be completely different from one’s actual self and yet is held to the same social standards ressonates in my own observations about the world of Second Life.