coded objects

1
coded objects

• 24.04.06

2
midterm

• three parts
• matching passage from reading you match w/
  author from list provided
• multiple choice includes t/f covers lectures,
  readings, demos/screenings also some 1-2 word
  answers
• short answers answers ranging from 2-3 sentences
  to a short paragraph
• you will need a bluebook

3
coded objects

• coded as in computer code but also social codes
• how social codes are coded through computer
  mediated communication (CMC)

4
coded objects

• MUDs
• coded social networks
• establishing the codes for social networking and
  organization online (through CMC)

5
coded objects

• MUDs
• foundational online environments, communities,
  social networks
• while the technology may be old now, they still
  establish some of the same issues that are with
  us in more graphically sophisticated on-line
  social environments (ranging from Myspace or
  MMORPGs)

6
cow ate my brain

• loyd blankenship
• aka mentor -- author of hacker manifesto
• OOP object oriented programming
• creating a virtual environment
• topology both technical and social

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MUDs MOOs

• MUD multiple user dungeon (later dimension,
  domain, dialogue)
• created in late 1970s in UK
• role-playing games (based on Dungeons Dragons)
• text-based, multiple user, UNIX platform
• later became more social in focus (TinyMUDs)

8
generic MUD map

• mappingcyberspace.com

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MUDs MOOs

• MOO MUD object oriented
• social focus
• creating characters, creating rooms, interacting
• LambdaMOO
• created by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC, Oct. 30
  1990
• objects and verbs (and properties)
• www.moo.mud.org

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LambdaMOO map

• mappingcyberspace.com

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MOO OOP

• MOO
• text-based online space
• everything is an object, has object
• verbs activity/action attached to objects
• property value stored on an object

12
habitat lucasfilm

• worlds away

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habitat 1980s

• chip morningstar f. randall farmer
• graphical MUD w/ avatars
• initially developed for a Commodore 64 computer
• many player online virtual environment
• object behavior responds to player input

14
habitat

• essential lesson from habitat
• a cyberspace is defined more by the interactions
  among the actors within it than by the
  technology with which it is implemented. . . .
  At the core of our vision is the idea that
  cyberspace is necessarily a many-participant
  environment
• morningstar farmer, the lessons of
  lucasfilms habitat (1991)

15
habitat

• some features
• token-based economic system
• decentralized social organization
• (based on libertarian/free market philosophies)
• allowing the system to evolve

16
habitat

• some features
• while not centrally planned or determined, there
  is a philosophy and a related architecture that
  sets conditions for how participants can interact
• this idea is important for the Nakamura race
  in/for cyberspace and Dibbell rape in
  cyberspace readings

17
actor-network theory

• actors/actants different types of agents linked
  by networks
• can be humans or tools or objects all are
  given equal status
• human/computer not a person using a tool, but
  two actor/actants performing operations on each
• in the context of and producing new forms of
  networked connections
• actors cannot be separated from networks cannot
  be isolated from connections and contexts

18
actor-network theory

• networks
• no up/down, in/out, near/far
• structured on associations connections
• all boundary
• agency action operates through the network
• more accurately, through the actor-network
• through interaction

19
julian dibbell

• pay attention to his language
• he uses it to play with our assumptions about
  reality
• to play with the borders between real virtual
• his interest is not in whether these events
  really happened
• more about the status of reality and action
  itself in the context of social networks

20
julian dibbell

• pay attention to his language
• MUDs semifictional digital otherworlds
• story about
• an elusive congeries of flesh and bytes named
  Mr. Bungle, and of the ghostly sexual violence he
  committed in the halls of LambdaMOO, and most
  importantly of the ways his violence and his
  victims challenged the thousand and more
  residents of that surreal, magic-infested mansion
  to become, finally, the community so many of them
  already believed they were.

21
julian dibbell

• It asks us to behold the new bodies awaiting us
  in virtual space undazzled by their phantom
  powers, and to get to the crucial work of sorting
  out the socially meaningful differences between
  those bodies and our physical ones. And perhaps
  most challengingly it asks us to wrap our
  late-modern ontologies, epistemologies, sexual
  ethics, and common sense around the curious
  notion of rape by voodoo doll -- and to try not
  to warp them beyond recognition in the process.

22
julian dibbell

• They say repeated 4x in opening paragraph
  why?
• final time
• . . . I can assure you that what they say is
  true . . .

23
julian dibbell

• The facts
• time/place
• location
• description
• the remaining facts tell us. . .

24
julian dibbell

• These particulars, as I said, are unambiguous.
  But they are far from simple, for the simple
  reason that every set of facts in virtual reality
  (or VR, as the locals abbreviate it) is shadowed
  by a second, complicating set the "real-life"
  facts. And while a certain tension invariably
  buzzes in the gap between the hard, prosaic RL
  facts and their more fluid, dreamy VR
  counterparts, the dissonance in the Bungle case
  is striking.

25
julian dibbell

• Ludicrously excessive by RL's lights, woefully
  understated by VR's, the tone of exu's response
  made sense only in the buzzing, dissonant gap
  between them.
• Which is to say it made the only kind of sense
  that can be made of MUDly phenomena. For while
  the facts attached to any event born of a MUD's
  strange, ethereal universe may march in straight,
  tandem lines separated neatly into the virtual
  and the real, its meaning lies always in that
  gap.

26
julian dibbell

• what happens inside a MUD-made world is neither
  exactly real nor exactly make-believe, but
  nonetheless profoundly, compellingly, and
  emotionally true.
• how is he differentiating these categories?
  (real/make believe/true)

27
community (traditional)

• descriptive
• normative
• functional/associational
• organic
• trusted (?)
• often defined under threat
• romanticized

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community (Ferdinand Tönnies)

• total community (nostalgic community)
• (Gemeinschaft traditional)
• dense web of connections, shared rituals and
  symbols
• vertical and horizontal
• associational community
• (Gesellschaft society)
• social fabric less dense
• shallow and instrumental relations
• impoverishes community while broadening social
  sphere

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community 2 (problematic) positions

• Cyberspace damages RL community
• encourages withdrawal from RL
• virtual communities contribute to or cause the
  demise or RL
• addiction

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community 2 (problematic) positions

• Cyberspace re-enacts community
• RL community has been eroded already
• virtual communities positively replace what is
  missing in RL

• Cyberspace damages RL community
• encourages withdrawal from RL
• virtual communities contribute to or cause the
  demise or RL
• addiction

31
virtual communities

• Howard Rheingold
• on-line communities make up for what is lacking
  in freeway, strip-mall, high-rise
  (urban/suburban) world
• homesteading on the electronic frontier
• new traditionalism and pastoralism
• compensating correcting
• Gemeinschaft nostalgia

32
virtual communities

• Howard Rheingold
• www.well.com
• whole earth lectronic link
• founded 1985
• site for digerati

33
networked sociality

• Andreas Wittel
• uses the term in contrast to community
• integration disintegration (not belonging)
• disembeded intersubjectivity
• immediate intersubjectivity
• social relations not narrational (w/duration)
  but informational (ephemeral)
• combines work play

34
networked sociality

• Manuel Castells Network Society
• macro sociological focus
• subjects, technologies, and links between
• networks as dynamic open structures
• key to capitalist economy based on innovation,
  globalization, and decentralized concentration

35
networked sociality

• Barry Wellman
• personal communities networked individualism
• communities now defined socially not spatially
• place to place replaces door to door links
  households in different neighborhoods
• car, telephone, email
• interpersonal networks

36
networked sociality

• Barry Wellman
• personal communities networked individualism
• mobile-ization communication in across
  physical locations
• (communication disconnected from immediate
  location)
• is online/offline dichotomy overdone?
• increasing transparency of CMC