We must become ignorant
Of all we’ve been taught,
And be, instead, bewildered.

Run from what’s profitable and comfortable
If you drink those liqueurs, you’ll spill
The spring waters of your real life.

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

I have tried prudent planning
Long enough, from now
On, I’ll live mad.

-Rumi

Thanks for your insightful reply….I’ve opened up these notions mostly because I’m at the “know what I don’t know” stage…and as I’ve amply demonstrated, that usually means I’m not very coherent.

It’s my feeling that in virtual worlds, and in particular the growing availability of “open” worlds (like SL and as opposed to MMORPG), concepts of privacy and identity are often debated at a superficial level.

The reason this and my original posts were about alts was to highlight that we’re making value judgments about how we use our time and present ourselves in virtual worlds without thinking or articulating that these decisions are already constrained by the technology, the code, and the platform owners. Once we sign off on the TOS and the EULA, we are co-creating our in world presence with the platforms themselves, and by doing so accept but don’t always articulate that the restrictions on our choice have implications.

People talk about alts and use ideas like “different alts for different tasks” “business versus personal” and “needing some time for myself” and while all of these reasons can be perfectly valid, I stand by the idea that we only need to resort to these reasons because the code and the platform have constrained choice.

I’m sorry, but I work enough as it is, and I’d like the ability to turn off any work-related IMs after 9, say. But I can’t. So, it starts to look more and more attractive to have a separate avatar for the purposes of managing vendors and all the attendant IMs. This is as true in WoW as it is in SL – characters who act as banks, for example, help bypass the code which makes travel to markets a time investment, and act as sorting zones for group loot distribution.

But I’m trying very hard not confuse the issue here of identity with avatar expression. I’m making the argument that many are creating seemingly different versions of their ‘avatar identities’ in virtual worlds, which isn’t the same as saying that we HAVE different identities. They are doing so sometimes because the code leads them that way.

I am in full agreement and have argued in this blog on several occasions that there’s no split between real and virtual. Different expressions of our identity are parts of the whole, it’s just that the tools are different. Just as I might speak differently as a learner than a teacher, I might express myself in different ways in a virtual world through different presentations of my avatar and the spaces I interact with. However, my point about the separation of business/personal was again to highlight that the code leads us to behave in a way where it’s an incentive to start “splitting” our personas.

I’ve also argued previously that while it’s nice to think we’re fully integrated human beings, I’m not sure that the therapy business would be as successful as it is if it wasn’t for individual’s feelings that there’s “parts of themselves missing” or “things about themselves they need to explore”.

Your comment on the private self is interesting, however, and I’d like to understand that more, but whether it’s true or not that there’s no such thing as the private self, I can’t help thinking that people might confuse the desire for privacy with the need for a private self. The private self may be historically constructed…and if that’s true, then maybe my comments about the growing prevalence of a tribal morality in virtual worlds might also be a return to cultural norms in which social identity and identification dissolves the idea of the private?

I have a large number of friends who maintain separate online IDs….and not just for virtual worlds, but for mailing lists, Web-based forms, mySpace, etc. Whether their “private selves” are really illusions or not, I can’t say, these are all just intuitive ideas really…and the craving for protected private identity in an increasingly transparent and monitored world seems to be gaining rather than waning.

They would LIKE the ability to opt out of spaces within virtual worlds. I’m not saying opt out of worlds, but different spaces will have different levels of needs for what kind of information is collected, shared, and what levels of controls we have over our expression of ourselves and the information we share. I’m not arguing for an opt out/opt in for virtual worlds, but rather for the idea that it’s transparency rather than freedom that’s the end goal.

I may decide to attend a class in a virtual space, and when I sign up for the class I’d like to know whether I’m being graded, tracked, and whether my comments are being recorded. I may decide to attend a concert in a virtual space and I’d like to know the same thing. Transparency gives me the freedom to choose whether to participate and how – my decision is my own, but I don’t need to opt out and go “someplace else” – you’re right, there’s no “outside”, but there are rooms on the inside whose doors I may choose not to open.

Eben Moglen put it quite nicely when he said there should be two rules for virtual spaces:

One: Avatars ought to exist independent of any individual social contract put forward by any particular space. And two: Social contracts ought to be available in a machine readable form which allows the avatar projection intelligence to know exactly what the rules are and to allow you set effective guidelines about I don’t go to spaces where people don’t treat me in ways that I consider to be crucial in my treatment.

Finally…I take your point. Expression and control can not be extracted from each other. So I amend…

“It’s not the emerging generations I worry about. It’s the political, corporate and social groups (who have until now largely controlled the outlets of expression) that will be upending in their wake, a new age of collaborative creation in which hierarchies dissolve or reconfigure, and our right to have control over expression takes precedence over leaving it to others.”

Do you really believe that expression can be extracted from control and vice versa? Are they opposites/contraries?

Curious…

I know that my post sounded a bit gloomy but I think that since I’ve started to write this blog a few months ago I’ve been, and remain, optimistic about the opportunities for this technology. In fact, the previous sub-title of the blog was virtual worlds, creativity, and spirituality.

I agree that there are no default ethical ‘settings’ to virtual worlds, but by virtue of being built they each have within them preconditions that may influence our ability to behave and to influence our ethical framework.

The issue of privacy, for example…on one platform, a surveillance society and on another anonymity to the exclusion of the ability to achieve identity trust. Either end of the spectrum colors our ability to make choices and I’m arguing that individuals (not ethicists, just ordinary ‘users’) begin to behave in specific virtual worlds within certain ethical frameworks because the platforms are built to encourage it.

On the one hand a lack of guarantees by platform owners that they’ll delete chat logs between users and on the other hand the New Yorker article this week (I don’t read or watch the news so I’m sure it isn’t newsworthy) of the girl who killed herself because a “boy” on mySpace harassed her. Anonymity allowed her next door neighbor to disguise herself as a boy.

In both cases, the coding of the platform leaves a different range of choices.

I am in complete agreement with your sentiment about “the political imagination of emerging virtual generations”. It’s not the emerging generations I’m worried about, frankly. It’s the political, corporate and societies who will be upending in their wake, a new age of collaborative creation in which hierarchies dissolve or reconfigure, and expression takes precedence over control.

Interesting times as they say, and I am optimistic because of the power these technologies bring towards furthering creativity and global friendships, and pessimistic that the response to change by the current ‘stakeholders’ won’t bring with it new unforeseen risks to our liberty.

(Hey, anyone have a writ from the record companies I can post?)