In Automating Inequality, Eubanks explains how technological advancements often benefit middle and upper classes while creating division from the poor. It is said that, “our relationship to poverty in the United States has always been characterized by ‘cultural denial’” (Eubanks 175). Cultural denial is defined as as a system that allows us to know about the pain and discrimination that exists in the world while never openly acknowledging it. I would like to connect the theme of cultural denial mentioned inAutomating Inequality to the role of Second Life discussed in Drax’s film Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is Me and Jamison’s article “The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future.” I argue that the integration of the physical/real and virtual world advances cultural denial.
Testimonials of Second Life users in Drax’s film and Jamison’s article show how many individuals argue that there is no distinction between the physical and virtual worlds. Although titled Second Life, most of the users of the platform claimed the two are one. I think that the combination of the physical and virtual worlds perpetuates the theme of cultural denial. By combining the virtual and physical, we feed further and almost completely into technologies that separate the middle and upper classes and poor and working class populations. This consumption into a virtual realm will foster an environment suitable for cultural denial. One example of this involves Second Life users who are completely involved and integrated into the Second Life community. These users, and users of similar platforms, view virtual life as real life, creating a sense of ignorance to the problems that take place in physical environments. Another example of virtual consumption that can distort one’s perceptions of the physical/real world is the use of social media to create one’s own reality. Users of social media choose who they follow and whose forms of virtual expression they engage in, making their virtual feed the lens with which they view the world. Here, they choose to ignore other problems not made clear to them through their social media profile.
Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, stated that he “envisioned a future in which his grandchildren would see the real world as a kind of ‘museum or theater,’ while most work and relationships happened in virtual realms like Second Life” (Jamison). He envisioned the physical world as being left behind. So what role does virtual life have within the physical world and to what extent can the two coexist without conflict? In May of 2017, a “Russian man was given a three and a half year suspended sentence for inciting religious hatred” (Seddon). His crime was playing PokemonGo in a church. This is one of many examples that shows how complicated the relationship is between the coexistence of the virtual and physical worlds. Technology is embedded in our cultural context and not separate from existing social inequalities. As technology advances and societies continue to evolve, the role and effect of virtual life in physical life will constantly change in response.
Testimonials of Second Life users in Drax’s film and Jamison’s article show how many individuals argue that there is no distinction between the physical and virtual worlds. Although titled Second Life, most of the users of the platform claimed the two are one. I think that the combination of the physical and virtual worlds perpetuates the theme of cultural denial. By combining the virtual and physical, we feed further and almost completely into technologies that separate the middle and upper classes and poor and working class populations. This consumption into a virtual realm will foster an environment suitable for cultural denial. One example of this involves Second Life users who are completely involved and integrated into the Second Life community. These users, and users of similar platforms, view virtual life as real life, creating a sense of ignorance to the problems that take place in physical environments. Another example of virtual consumption that can distort one’s perceptions of the physical/real world is the use of social media to create one’s own reality. Users of social media choose who they follow and whose forms of virtual expression they engage in, making their virtual feed the lens with which they view the world. Here, they choose to ignore other problems not made clear to them through their social media profile.
Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, stated that he “envisioned a future in which his grandchildren would see the real world as a kind of ‘museum or theater,’ while most work and relationships happened in virtual realms like Second Life” (Jamison). He envisioned the physical world as being left behind. So what role does virtual life have within the physical world and to what extent can the two coexist without conflict? In May of 2017, a “Russian man was given a three and a half year suspended sentence for inciting religious hatred” (Seddon). His crime was playing PokemonGo in a church. This is one of many examples that shows how complicated the relationship is between the coexistence of the virtual and physical worlds. Technology is embedded in our cultural context and not separate from existing social inequalities. As technology advances and societies continue to evolve, the role and effect of virtual life in physical life will constantly change in response.
What are the real consequences of virtual life?
Sources
Draxtor, Bernhard. “Our Digital Selves: My Avatar Is Me.” YouTube. YouTube, May 17, 2018.
Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the
Poor. New York, NY: St. Martins Press, 2017.
Jamison, Leslie. “The Digital Ruins of a Forgotten Future.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media
Company, June 6, 2018.
9/.
Seddon, Robert. “Why Augmented Reality Is Triggering Cultural Conflict and Religious
Controversy.” The Conversation, September 6, 2019.
gious-controversy-77976.
Comments
I think your point about the conflation of virtual and physical life and the perpetuation of ignorance (and perhaps of apathy) that this conflation serves is a really interesting one. I don't know if I completely agree, because the virtual world allows one to be connected to the happenings of the physical world in a completely unprecedented manner. In my understanding, this integration and knowledge often promotes - or at least has the potential to - a care, connection, and interest that has significant ability to drive activism as opposed to wholly stifle it. However, I think the complete replacement of the physical world with a virtual one does have the potential for perpetuating, and erasing, inequities present in the physical world. If your world is solely of the virtual, if you have the ability to craft it exactly as you please, you have the privilege of avoiding hard questions, hard conversations, and hard action should you so choose. That's inherently a very dangerous concept, because it inevitably allows hegemonic and privileged narratives to be dominant in personalized world constructions. So I guess the question becomes: if the world becomes a predominantly virtual one (or these exclusions are occurring in virtual spaces) how do these exclusions actually impact the physical world? Does it? Does it not need to in order to still have impact?