Month: December 2017

All too suddenly, our seminar has come to an end. I just wanted to take this final blog post to reflect a little on the class and my gratitude for being a part of it.

I took this class because it was out of my comfort zone and, although most of the topics we discussed are still a bit out there for me, I am so glad that I had the opportunity to engage with this entirely new material with you all. Although I may still not know the intricacies of how the internet was founded or exactly how blockchain works, I now have a narrative in my mind for how it all came about and a better understanding for how incredible the creation of this “collective hallucination” was. I am grateful for the insights into cybersecurity Dr. Michael Sulmeyer provided for us, and how they completely rejected my assumption that security breaches are infrequent and possible because of a lack of due diligence. I also very much appreciated the detail with which we explored Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, as well as the broader technology of blockchain. I’d of course heard countless success stories of those who invested in Bitcoin early and knew that it was a digital currency that was not affiliated with any specific nation, but did not know much about this mysterious moneymaker beyond that. This course, and our discussions, have clarified this cutting-edge topic for me and, possibly most rewarding of all, led to wonderful spontaneous conversations with friends and family. I love when course material is relevant enough to serve regular conversation—indeed, that is one of the times when I most value my education.

Most of all, I am grateful to have spent this first semester of college with all of you. It was a tumultuous experience of adjustment for all of us I’m sure, and to have the consistency and unrestrained excitement of this class to look forward to every Monday was an anchor for me. Thank you so much.

One of the most intriguing parts of our final seminar, for me, was our brief discussion of the virtual platform  Second Life before we dove into the internet of value. Although it’s heyday was in 2007, Second Life still has 600,000 regular users according to the article “The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future” that was published by the Atlantic this month (thanks Hannah for recommending it in class!) . The article describes how the platform serves as an escape for many people, and offered the examples of a parent of  children with serious developmental disorders and a woman diagnosed with multiple sclerosis who both use the platform to live free from their limitations and obligations for some time. The article also described how Second Life could serve as a chance to pursue one’s unfulfilled dreams. For Jonas Tancred,  who was interviewed for the article, that meant becoming a musician. He performed concerts in the platform in front of raving audiences (while in real life he played in his kitchen on a guitar plugged into his laptop) and grew so popular that eventually he was offered a real-life record deal in New York City. Not only that, but he met a woman on Second Life after one of his concerts who he would eventually be the mother of his child.

This blurring of the lines virtual and the physical world reminded me of the science fiction book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. In the book, the physical world is in a state of despair and chaos due to an energy crisis, and the only escape is the virtual reality game/society called the OASIS. The OASIS is more immersive than Second Life, and is described as being accessible via a visor and haptic gloves. Wealthy players could even purchase entire haptic bodysuits to feel fully engaged in the virtual world. Although Second Life is of course not nearly as widespread nor as technologically advanced as the OASIS in the novel, I was intrigued to see that the fantastical ideas in a book I read just recently have in fact been played with for over a decade.

Though I can see many merits of a virtual world as an opportunity to escape the binds of prejudice, responsibility, poverty, and to interact with people from all across the world, I worry that it is also a way to evade the challenges that we face in the real world. Indeed, in Ready Player One, the world is in ruins, and the protagonist lives in a trailer park (the trailers are precariously stacked on top of each other because it is so overpopulated) that is riddled with violence. The world is past saving, and all the people can do is log into the OASIS to escape it for a while.

Although Second Life was admittedly never widespread and currently has but 600,000 players, the Atlantic article argues that the desire to create a curated, ideal version of oneself has just been played out on social media platforms life Facebook and Instagram instead. People may feel more comfortable because they are not creating a fully fabricated avatar, but the fundamental will to escape real life remains the same. There are many problems with having a hand-picked online persona in my opinion, as I described in my last post. In addition, though, it would be devastating and even apocalyptic to see people dive too far into the virtual world,  so discouraged by the real world that they abandon any efforts to address its issues.