Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff was our guest on Metanomics this past Monday. It was an exhilarating conversation, covering everything from the cultural implications of voice in Second Life to the concept of “Overlays” as a way to think about our digital lives.
Tom is an incredibly engaging person with an enthusiasm that left me (and many in the audience I think) feeling exhilarated about the future of virtuality. We’re just at the beginning in our understanding of what virtual worlds mean, the implications of avatar embodiment, and the larger cultural implications of our increasingly digital lives.
I’ll comment more soon once the transcripts from the show are available.
In the meantime, here’s the video of Monday’s show:
Thanks so much for posting this. It was a truly wonderful discussion and such a treat for me… 18 more months still of being Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist… such an amazing learning experience for me but I really, really miss being able to spend more time in sl having just these kinds of experiences.
So invite me again sometime… please? And do whatever you did to get that amazing audience too…
Thanks to both of you, I wasn’t able to attend in person, but thought the vid was inspiring.
All the issues you discussed are fascinating and have been discussed back and forth in blogs over the years, and will continue to be.
Great food for thought.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dusan Writer, Dan Holt. Dan Holt said: Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff, author of Coming of Age in SL, on Metanomics: http://bit.ly/gaqGx5 [...]
questions questions questions… and not about answers….
good;)
I was sorry to miss this. Tom is great. What’s interesting to me is that he sees a future of avatarization. It always seemed self-evident to me, but I have to say that much of the mass social media like Facebook and Twitter isn’t about avatarization but about RL photos and sharing other content. Most people are socializing on Mobile and on those platforms and they are not in avatars as such, although one could argue that Twitter icons are a kind of avatar and people fussing with their pictures and status on FB are making a kind of avatar (but I think maybe that’s stressing it, and in reality, they are making placeholders for their RL selves that are a kind of business card that you can then click on and take further.
I keep wanting to bank on avatars in virtual worlds as separate spaces, but then keeping wondering if suddenly video is going to get better and faster and cheaper and even interactive/clickable so that it will replace avatarization…