Simulated Worlds

Why do we seem to need virtual spaces to socialize in? No matter if it is a networking community, a chat room or a virtual world, a place to meet others outside our bodies seem to be fulfilling an increasing need. But what kind of need is that? Humans are social creatures by nature and has a need of interacting with others, but why online? Why in worlds that our not our own and in bodies that are not physical? The reason why we wishes to be in another world could be very simple; fulfilments of fantasies and escaping reality - experiencing something else than your everyday life. Maybe that is an unfairly plain explanation of it but let us say that is why we need another environment for our socialization. The body then, Taylor states in Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds that to root oneself in a digital space the user needs a digital body. Not only to display oneself to others but to confirm the user that s/he is in fact in that space (Taylor, 42). The way of using and altering the digital body as a material to state and carry out identities brings ones thoughts to cyborgs. The digital bodies are created, electronic material but at the same time the user, it is a part of the users (online) identity and in the virtual world an actual body, constructed material but controlled and with the mind of a user. The boundaries between what is human and what is machine get blurred and the relationships between gender, body and identity get challenged. The choice of digital bodies is a choices of how to display your identity to others, not much different than in real life where you appearance is highly readable to others to convey information of who you are. But stepping into a simulated world means being given the opportunity of conveying other information than you do in real life. Some physical attributes such as skin colour are in real life not changeable and brings with it a certain meaning. In your online world the users can choose what kind of information their bodies should display, the body tell the other users of who you are in a way that might even be more real than the users physical appearance would. Maybe the biggest reason to use digital bodies when socializing in an online space is because one wants to be seen and takes pleasure in the esurience of seeing that other is seeing oneself.

Discussing online worlds is not about questioning however it is a “real” world or not, it is a part of our reality and of our world and therefore it is real. But what about my digital body? My avatar is a character based on myself but at the same time she is me, my online me. When I walk into a coffee shop in Second Life it is not me who is doing it but me who decides it. When my avatar meets other avatar, it is she who meets them but me who decide if she will interact with them. When my avatar is having a business meeting it is my avatar who is speaking and gesticulating, but it is the offline me who is performing in real life what was discussed at that meeting.

Maybe spending time in a virtual world is merely an escape from our not so perfect real world. By entering Second Life I enter I world free of gender assumptions and prejudices, a world where the possibilities are endless and every user has the same conditions as others and where no multinational companies can achieve their power only because of their size. Or maybe our “real” world is to much connected to the virtual for letting the virtual spaces be as perfect as they have the capacity to be. Where there are humans there will be the effect of human behaviours on the places in which they are in. Second Life for example, by letting the users create the space, provides endless opportunities for creating whatever you wish but people rarely wish what is perfect. Kathleen Ann Gonan writes in More than You’ll Know: Down the Rabbit Hole of the Matrix that Neo “creates reality” (110) and that is exactly what users are doing in simulated worlds.


References
Goonan, Kathleen Ann. More than You’ll Know: Down the Rabbit Hole of the Matrix.
Taylor, T.L. Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds.