In the end for me, what I like about all this is the fact that you talk about the reality-virtual continuum. For me, very simply, everything is real, if in its own particular way, and all forms of reality are connected. I don’t mean this in any mystical way. I mean a more basic materialism, although one that has to be qualified by change, by movement, and by things something like animal spirits.

So thanks!

Andrew

I think there is a difference between a kind of diegetic sense of role play and emotions and receptions from RL. Most players in Second Life do not make a huge distinction between RL feelings and SL feelings. Thus afk is more disrupting than “brb”, or, “just getting a tea/ another glass of wine” (which are references to RL, thus not diegetic) but still part of the communication that makes the immersion happen. Telling something about RL thus may include those things/feelings happening in RL, while “afk” is disrupting it. The avie is still there but showing it is not communicating any more, and thus making an abrupt brake in the immersion, while “brb, need to pee” keeps the emotional bond, although it is totally non-diegetic and out of character.

While AFK-ing and other instances of going in and out of communicative states underlines that games are part of the flesh reality or the immediate geographical reality (I stopped using the distinction “real” and “virtual” a long time ago, prefering “flesh” and “digital”), the leap to addiction and reality dysfunctions is too abrupt.

What we are seeing more clearly than before is that organisations are defined by communication, not by geography. This is something organisation scholars have known for decades, if not milennia. So, the reality of the organisation you join, formally or informally, by playing a game or being active online, is as real as any multinational corporation out there.

Now, what does this have to do with addiction?

Not a whole lot, what it does connect to is a desire to be included and not left out of “loop”. As we all know there is no better way to become unhappy and isolated than be being uninformed. In groups depending on real-time communication presence is the only way to stay informed. Otherwise you’ll log on at 8 and find that all your mates went into Karazhan at 7, and you have nobody to play with.

This may lead to obsessive behaviour, but so do a lot of other groups where decisions are unpredictable and depend on presence for communication. We are talking about networks of friends which are maintained by constant meetings, talk, gossip, inquieries, about sports teams where absence or delay gets you excluded, about families where absence leads to divorce.

Human beings know the cost of not communicating. What becomes problematic in games isn’t that there is an “alternate reality”, but that it’s the same reality, where the same mechanisms get into play. This means that there is a real conflict between social modes, and players have to make up their minds. Who do I wish to spend my time with, the guild mates, the family, the choir? Choosing one to the exclusion of the two other will carry real consequences for all the people involved, but there’s not really a conflict fo realities. It’s a conflict of priorities.

OTOH it feels like the synthetic experience is moving towards one that is entirely mediation and not related to the physical (though again I suppose the mechanism for mediation is itself physical).

But I diverse, the meaning of AFK in light of mediation is a sort of temporary resignation from the medium, often (as with AFK BIO) to deal with the necessities of the physical entity. IRL on the other hand seems to relate more specifically to a position or location and less so to the type of mediation.

I am not sure if I am rambling, but the graph was an attempt to find other ground, and for me to see that there is a beautiful unexplored very mediated very physical space as well as an unmediated unphysical space (perhaps thought?) was interesting and perplexing.

I don’t want to derail the thought again, but considering some issues that came up in a previous discussion of borders it seems that both terms deal with border issues or deliniation, from that I tend to wonder where immersion is? Or suspension of disbelief…

Okay, now I am rambling.

j

http://tinyurl.com/3qb48s

I joked that the Orangutan was trying to “augment his reality”. But it’s actually not a joke I guess. He has a representation in his mind about a “virtual reality” he has seen “in real life” associated with using a specific tool. And he uses the tool to try to create that virtual reality. But he doesn’t actually have the fish. Not yet anyway [though he can spear fish that human fisherman have already trapped.]

I think the analogy I’ve been trying to make is that we are trying to “spear” a reality that doesn’t exist. In actually-existing “real world” reality Orangutans aren’t yet capable of spear-fishing on their own. It’s an illusion too.