Second Life does not come from nothing and is only the ripe fruit of electronic communications. Rather, his seminal model emerged very early in the minds of visionaries and writers had postulated that the psychological need access to new territories. Prototypes fantastic and immersive virtual reality interactive debut came at a time when the authentic experiences exploration had become rare. While physical mobility increased dramatically, the mental is reduced. The journey of the soul could not dispel the feeling that the globe, almost suddenly, he became a small, insignificant, predictable. At this crucial watershed between the possibility el'inattuabilità began to creep into some kind of imaginary, which break new ground. Many sensed that over time the technology could violate the claustrophobia of that world now defined by providing material for new experiences.
A machine of this type have already appeared in "The Invention of Morel" by Adolfo Bioy Casares fantastic story, published in 1940, but usually is credited with founding the concept of simulated reality immersive telepresence to be shared, the science fiction writer William Gibson. In reality, the ideas were in the air for a very long time. Among the first to go as far figure Hugo Gernsback, and ingredients are more than evident in remote foundational works of Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Kurt Vonnegut, among others. In the 70s the concept array of information technology was already well delineated and had only to wait for the work of talented writers, by Bruce Sterling Roger Zelazny, to strike the attention of the general public. Simulations
electronic fun, engaging, even useful to mental health, were conjectured with great anticipation. In '69 Ben Bova, in "The Duelling Machine," described a psycho-electronic device that plays a sort of immersive virtual reality indistinguishable from real life. What is new is the recreational dimension of this apparent anticipation of Second Life. Users use the machine for engaging battles that allow you to download their aggressive instincts in the tele-interaction in a supervideogioco immersive. But the system turns out to be anything but harmless, but that's another story.
Some early estimates did not fail even in Italy. Primo Levi, in the story "Pensions" (in "Natural History", 1966) invents the Torec (Total Recorder) device that records the experiences directly from the brain, allowing them to share. It was the forerunner of the hypothetical technologies described in the movie "Brainstorm", directed by Douglas Trumbull in 1983, suggested again in "Until the End of the World" in 1991, directed by Wim Wenders and "Strange Days" in 1995, directed by Kathryn Bigelov and written by James Cameron. As always
imagination precedes technology, or at least traces its highways, and determine their plausibility. Today, the Trumbull scenarios may still seem distant, but is not so. Many cutting-edge research designed to interface the brain, and sooner or later you will succeed. But back to the present.
Second Life is the conceptual opposite of Google Earth, because he can follow only what the world is. Given the vastness of our planet, it may seem so, but very little. If the perceptual point of view the surface of a sphere is finite, the mind may even be an enclosed space. Instead, Second Life is by definition an open ultraluogo limited only by the fact that must be constructed, which could cancel the surprise. The unpredictability, however, is guaranteed by the sum of the projections of each. From this point of view, it is the opposite of Google Earth. Not explore representations of physical regions, but mental facilities.
How do you react to this new people in "real world" contributes to the construction of public opinion? Just read through the reports that appear periodically on the Italian and foreign press to understand that beyond the enthusiasm of the facade lurks almost always some suspicion. The mistrust stems from the fact that the actors of this new type of social representation is not constitute a public but a collective phenomenon that dodges the analysis and shows that even less manageable size of the now usual hypertext.
This is the point: Second Life is not a medium or a Ipermedium, but principally an artifact, man Worldmaker unexpected recovery. Possible to develop arrays conscious, intentional, but also to allow the emergence of the unconscious desires of each user, from all possible angles of perspective, environments like Second Life seem to avoid at least in part to pre-existing conditions are not written but in the Voluntary Sector, where physical participation is always decisive. This relative lack of corporeality escapes the logic of traditional political dimension, although not to the political dimension of all, and certainly no exception to the economic dimension, which instead favors. And here we encounter a second conflict, less obvious than the first, because they played entirely within the digital universe, the very heart of connective condition.
The preliminary application is as follows: a world structured on open systems, economies of scale and lattice snapshots communications still needs the consent? Apparently yes, but it is known that many authoritative observers say the opposite because the digitization of information has led to the tracking, a necessary condition of the control. Be careful - they say - because there is the Panopticon! But the panopticon in virtual worlds in a sense can not exist.
The files, archives, records have always been parts of a control system that follows the course of the city, through the perennial question of its relations with the administration. The administrative or judicial acts described, and then de-restrict the subject's identity. But this cage cards can not bind to the bottom of the full complexity of human beings. Private thoughts, ideals, feelings, likes, dislikes and interests are to some extent free from the control, and as such have always been monitored or censored by the authorities by absolute power, since it is difficult and almost impossible to bring them summarized, although recent projects such as the so-called date-meaning (software that will allow you to extract significant patterns from a huge mass of information) to go in that direction.
During the last century, the advent of television without notice dismantles the greyness of typographic control, taking on the public scene the immense diversity of those feelings, ideals, tastes and idiosyncrasies. In "Understanding Media Marshall McLuhan, of course, assumed that the counterculture, suddenly exploded almost prophetic in the '60s, was at least partly unconsciously tax subliminal effect of television. Twenty years later, Joshua Meyrowitz, using much more systematic research, supports this view. Even Harold A. Innis, a master of "media prophet", had thrown light on the relationship between the submerged economy of the press and the general system of thought control. The printing machine turns to the world, not private individuals or communities - Innis argued - but, he added. it mainly determines the endless fragmentation of reality, which takes on the appearance of a discontinuous geography, so digital, so schematized. Perfect tool of power.
The fluidity of electronic communications, neorivoluzione end of the millennium, it seems to have given the same disruptive effects on the consciences subliminal television was in its early days and perhaps one of the reasons lies in the characteristics of digital information, which leaves traces divisible. What happens if the technology begins to plot ways a secret time, or at least reserved, subjective human reality? If traceability is power, absolute traceability could turn into an absolute power, but power without representation, not traceable to a particular elite or a visible leader is a kind of power, perhaps never experienced until now.
In a recent but already filed past the "transparency Computer "most impassioned tecnofilosofi. Was at work a transnational movement of thought that did not allow objections to the confident version of the revolution taking place. The journalism almost uncritically endorsed the new liberal vision mediated by technology. For example, Douglas Rushkoff said that Cyberia, new paradise, natural selection would favor the best "memes", the informational equivalent of genes, Mark Dery was ecstatic to technopaganism, Timothy Leary was exciting similarities with the experiences of hallucinogenic Hakim Bey rephrased key Internet users in the ancestry of Situationist détournement.
The constant that unites these and other visions of future based on the obvious prediction that sooner or later the web would become completely immersive, lies in the hegemony of the visible. The transparency and accessibility of digital information - one can argue - will make this clear as water. Power of metonymy. Transparency seems a real quality, which in itself is opposed to the cloudy haze. The opposite of "transparency" is "impure," "dishonesty," "immorality," "darkness", "insincerity", "hypocrisy", "false", "ambiguity" and its synonyms by association of ideas are "evidence", "simplicity," "comprehensiveness," "righteousness", "honesty", "spontaneity", "sincerity" and therefore "honesty" or "morality."
Therefore, transparency information should inaugurate the kingdom of truth. Unacceptable behavior, misconceptions, or regarded as such should emerge from the shadows, because they would be comparable in itself, stigmatization and then delete them. The other a transparent substrate should encourage interactions, exchanges, shares. Is it really so? Read in hindsight, the ideas about the future development of telepresence made in those years and dogmatically supported today seem extremely limited, many of them were blatantly contradicted by the facts.
Let's go back a moment to projections of the writers and visionaries. Although not directly subordinated to the ideological constraints of the assessment that permeates certain environments, but the writers have been affected by a cultural climate of widespread and very homogeneous, pulling its consequences from a few simple assumptions, such as the digitization of information and the evolution of interfaces under the powerful thrust of miniaturization and reduction in costs, effects of the so-called "Moore's Law."
What strikes vary in so many disparate imagery is the very common, almost universal tendency to announce the existence virtualized versions pessimistic. Again there are plenty of precedents. In "The Veldt," published in 1951, Ray Bradbury describes a "house of happiness", the product of advanced information technologies, able to satisfy every desire. However, the owners discovered that their children can no longer be separated from their virtual room, have become dependent, as a drug. This results in terrible conflict between parents, the censors of parallel reality to them unknown, and the children, who can no longer accustomed to the banality of daily life.
Philip K. Dick, meanwhile, invented in '63 and then developed in several stories the world of Perky Pat, an immersive simulation, accessible with the help of synthetic drugs, a situation that affects today by the insistence on the models existing in it: wealthy environments, inviting, beautiful rocking, young stalwart and other ingredients that are among the most constant criticism in reality "real" Second Life. The model was inspired in 1999 Perky Pat "eXistenZ by David Cronenberg, one of the most enigmatic film about the possible psychological effects of immersive games.
In light of these and other precedents, the traditional cyberpunk genre falls as we said in the wake of an almost ancient tradition, with the possible exception of Neal Stephenson, in "Snow Crash", 1992, launched into a remarkable experiment univ ersalmente and now famous, inventing an array computer - the Metaverse - very close to what Second Life shows today, but with an additional element: the Metaverse is used to control the minds metavirus mediated by a computer that acts on neuro-linguistic structures, bringing those affected to a primordial state, archaic, presumably the mental ostat typical of an era in which there were individuals, but only kept the masses in a constant state semi-hypnotic, and command-driven by symbols inscribed in the deep structures of the brain. They are concepts borrowed from the theories of neuroscientist Julian Jaynes and linguist Noam Chomsky.
Similarly, in the recent Matrix trilogy by the Wachowski brothers, the meta-digital world, assumes the same contours of the real world, then it wraps and submits it to a set of meta-rules that no human knows, because they are set by machines. In both cases, the forms of control are nothing more than the metaphor of the technology support of occult powers, and is financed by large factions of meta-policies.
As can be seen in much of mainstream production is multiplied up to the general paranoia, borrowed from a kind of unique setting ideological, that the virtual dimension is a derived form of total control. But behind this apparent contradiction evidence lies a license. Powers, which are based on control and that determine it, anxious above all to decide what is the reality, because it is derived from these decisions determine what should have prevalence, and for whom. It makes no difference if the reality in question is simulated. And that is why the economy of psychic worlds like Second Life at the bottom so irritating. In them is revealed the fact that reality is a universal fact, but subject to very different and individual aspirations and desires of the economy. In any case, the precognition of the forms of life are often a vicar thing in common: the idea that the foundation of a parallel world to unleash the unconscious desires of humankind, removing regulations that keep the size within limits considered acceptable.
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