{"id":53,"date":"2006-09-27T01:39:51","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T05:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/2006\/09\/27\/what-is-real-virtual-chainmail-vs-do"},"modified":"2007-02-16T07:29:46","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T11:29:46","slug":"what-is-real-virtual-chainmail-vs-doggie-day-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/2006\/09\/27\/what-is-real-virtual-chainmail-vs-doggie-day-care\/","title":{"rendered":"What is “real”? Virtual Chainmail vs. Doggie Day-Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

I very much enjoyed class this afternoon, and in particular the turn of conversation into the inevitable question of reality<\/em>. One of my earliest experiences in virtual communities was in a web-based discussion board where one of the longest-running threads tackled the question, “Is this talking?” In trying to find that thread just now in order to link to it, I saw the names (or at least pseudonyms) of people I’d spent many hours with ruminating over everything from trivia to philosophy; a group that drifted apart, came back together on 9\/11\/01, and has since drifted apart yet again. I haven’t “seen” many of them in a while (one is now a law professor btw), but the feelings I have for them as I write about them now are certainly real.<\/p>\n

By way of background, I spent the last four years working in legal aid with poverty lawyers whose clients struggled with the basic necessities of survival. I have struggled mightily with the question of whether the basic subject matter of this class is “real,” as in Keepin’ It Real real<\/em>. And from the perspective of trying to survive, perhaps nothing distinguishes selling virtual chainmail from swapping fart videos on YouTube. According to Benkler, finally the means of production is available to the masses… but the means to produce what<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Recently there have been a spate of media articles about high-end dog care (e.g. yesterday’s NYTimes<\/a>). People are sending their dogs to day camps where they get massages, orthopedic mattresses, and bedtime stories. Meanwhile, millions of people around the world live without limbs, homes, and literacy. As our last commentator from today perhaps suggested<\/a>, many Americans left reality behind a long time ago.<\/p>\n

So does Benkler describe a fantasy world built on top of the very real toiling of very real people, made possible by skimming the profits of our day jobs to feed our Second Lives? On the one hand it seems this new world fufills Marx’s hope that we would one day transcend capitalism, become our essential productive\/creative selves, and “fish in the morning, hunt in the afternoon, and write criticism in the evening.” On the other, are only we, the privileged, able to experience that freedom precisely because we’ve succeeded in squeezing our luxury-time from others? When we look at the new New Economy and imagine a decentralization of power, are we merely looking at a new form of slacktivism<\/a> in 3D incarnation<\/a>?<\/p>\n

I hope not, though I haven’t developed a coherent explanation to justify my feelings. I do believe that human achievement is built not only on material but also social advancement, and that therefore if the relationships I’ve developed online are real<\/em> then the potential to create real communities capable of instigating change must also be real. I welcome any thoughts on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I very much enjoyed class this afternoon, and in particular the turn of conversation into the inevitable question of reality. One of my earliest experiences in virtual communities was in a web-based discussion board where one of the longest-running threads tackled the question, “Is this talking?” In trying to find that thread just now in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[923],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cyberone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}