Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle Virtuality and Its Discontents

In chapter 9, Sherry Turkle focuses on issues surrounding the concept of community on the Internet and the effects it has on the individuals involved as they relate to their virtual on-line world verses their real life world.  Her main points center around the following issues:  reality verses the simulation of community in real life and on-line;  political and social aspects of extensive involvement on-line; and, nuances of words applied to on-line relationships especially in the realm of multi-user domain (MUD) games.

Turkle sees us creating 'dreams within dreams.'  She states that each step we move away from the original community, we experience the last simulation as more real than it really is.  For instance, shopping malls are a simulation of Main Street but if you go to Disneyland's Main Street, the shopping malls appear more real.  She states that technological optimists feel virtual communities will reverse some social atomization that we are creating in real life (irl).  However, she asks, "But is it really sensible to suggest that the way to revitalize community is to sit alone in our rooms, typing at our networked computers and filling our lives with virtual friends?" 

Her concern extends to the experiences of children as they use technology to learn about the world.  Turkle speaks next about the difference between exploring the natural world via interactive CD-ROM and experiencing the real thing.  Here, children have experiences away from real life which do not give them the whole picture.  She uses an example of a girl experiencing rafting the Colorado river irl and on screen.  She finds that while the on screen experience may be fun and possibly useful, the real life experience would be more likely to produce a rite of passage since the girl would need to use her own resources to survive potential dangers.  Turkle warns that simulation brings risks of skewing our experience of the real world: making denatured and artificial experiences seem real; making the fake seem more compelling than the real (e.g.. animals and plants do not behave as dramatically in real life as they do on television or on CD-ROM); and, virtual experience may have one believe that they have achieved more than they actually have. 

In this last scenario, Turkle explains that some people think that "virtual gender swapping enabled them to understand what it's like to be a person of the other gender."  However, as she explored this thought in her mind she found that living in a woman's body brings experiences that are not able to be known otherwise. "To a certain extent, knowledge is inherently experiential, based on a physicality that we each experience differently."  Nevertheless, in our lifetime and beyond, there will be both virtual and real life.  The challenge is how to get the best of both. 

As far as the political and social aspects of extensive on-line involvement, Turkle looks to the generation who is just entering the work force and sees a situation wherein the young adults are grappling with a recessive economy while trying to maintain a middle class lifestyle.  She finds that they are able to achieve their needs by engaging in MUD's and interacting with others of their age and similar circumstance.  Some feel that, with their experience in the MUD rooms, they will eventually be able to find a niche which will produce income. 

In the MUD rooms, one is able to participate in and have more power and influence over social and political decisions that are almost unreachable in real life.  Turkle expresses that, "if the politics of virtuality means democracy online and apathy off-line, there is reason for concern."  This concern is whether people use their lives on-line as an escape from their real world problems.  She feels that, if one is able to find a way to model a more fulfilling style of real life work, then use of MUD's would not be as much of an escape as they can be.  

 In its application to community, Howard Rheingold, author of The Virtual Community, is quoted as saying that, "[to make a community work] at least some of the people [must] reach out through that screen and affect each other's lives."  In other words, to have the community in virtual reality not influence one's real life renders it ineffective and incomplete.  There is great danger of using virtual life as an escape from one's real world.  Turkle informs, however, that there are working ongoing experiments in the corporate world wherein MUD's are being used for collaboration on national and international projects.  The possibilities here seem only limited by the imagination. 

Turkle expresses next that, "the information superhighway in general is steeped in a language of liberation and utopian possibility ...To date, a user's experience of the Internet is of a dizzyingly free zone.  On it information is easily accessible.  One can say anything to anyone."  However, she sites Michel Foucault's work that, "casts a sobering light on such enthusiasms."  Foucault argues that power today is in how much an individual can engage in self-surveillance.  Panopticon, a fanciful device created by Jeremy Bentham, an early proponent of utilitarianism, is one wherein a prison guard can watch prisoners without being seen. The prisoners never know when they are being watched and, therefore, they behave at all times as if being watched.  This same behavior is produced by those on-line, claims Foucault.  Because one's entries on-line are archived it becomes essentially a permanent record. 

The aspects, of freedom on-line and the personal responsibility it takes to engage in self-surveillance, come into play with issues encountered in MUD rooms.  In some, guns and violence are all part of the game.  Concern arises over the trivialization of violence and the effect virtual violence, especially in its forms of killing and rape, has on the virtual victims.  Virtual rape can occur when one player takes over the actions of another players character and make it perform sexual acts.  Some feel it is just a game but others take it very seriously and feel that it can damage a player emotionally.  Questions arise such as, "Where does the body end and the mind begin? is not the mind a part of the body?"  Some answer that, on-line, the mind is the body.   

Turkle also notes similar problems with killing a player or virtual murder.  In this case, one's character and everything built around it, one's virtual apartment, furniture, equipment, etc. everything that was created by the player is erased.  What accountability if any should be held against the player who 'murders' another?  Kidnapping is claimed as well when a bot, created by one player, is taken by another. 

I feel that the terms used in MUD rooms while appropriate for the game are not necessarily relevant to what happens to a MUD room player irl.  The destruction of one's character and all programed creations irl sounds more like vandalism than murder.  Situations of virtual rape seem more like violations of trust and indecent behavior than actual rape.  And, virtual kidnapping appears more like irl theft.  The actions in a MUD game are seen to be just a game to some, but others take these offenses very seriously.  Politics and socialization come into play and participants of MUD games solicit for restrictions on violence or for violence to be allowable. 

From my point of view, the Internet is only an avenue of self-expression and a resource for a wealth of information.  It is vast and contains many possibilities but, when the computer is off, one's real life continues and is the priority.