The Real Problem: Avatars, Metaphysics and Online Social Interaction

Pre-print of an essay published in "New Media & Society" 12(1), February 2010, pp. 127-141.

It is often assumed that the problem with 'virtual reality'—the concept, its various technological deployments, and the apparently oxymoronic phrase itself—has been our understanding, or perhaps misunderstanding, of the virtual.  The real problem, however, is not with the virtual; it is with the real itself.  This essay investigates the undeniably useful but ultimately mistaken and somewhat misguided concept of the real that has been routinely operationalized in investigations of new media technology.  The specific point of contact for the examination is the avatar.  What is at issue here is not the complicated structures and articulations of avatar identity but the assumed 'real thing' that is said to be its ultimate cause and referent.  In addressing this subject, the essay considers three theories of the real, extending from Platonism to the recent innovations of Slavoj Žižek, and investigates their effect on our understanding of computer-generated experience and social interaction.

Terra Nova 2.0—The New Worlds of MMORPGs

Critical Studies in Media Communication 26(2), June 2009, pp. 104-127

The dominant metaphor used to describe and situate MMORPGs, or massively multiplayer online role playing games (e.g. Ultima Online, EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Second Life, etc.), has been "new world" and "new frontier." By deploying this powerful imagery, game developers, players, the popular media, and academic researchers draw explicit connections between the technology of MMORPGs and the European encounter with the Americas and the western expansion of the United States. Although providing a compelling and often recognizable explanation of the innovations and opportunities of this new technology, the use of this terminology comes with a considerable price, one that had been demonstrated and examined by scholars of the Internet, cyberspace, and virtual reality over a decade ago. This essay explores the impact and significance of the terms "new world" and "frontier" as they have been deployed to explain and describe MMORPGs.

Thinking Otherwise: Ethics, Technology and Other Subjects

Ethics and Information Technology 9(3), July 2007, pp. 165-177

Ethics is ordinarily understood as being concerned with questions of responsibility for and in the face of an other. This other is more often than not conceived of as another human being and, as such, necessarily excludes others – most notably animals and machines. This essay examines the ethics of such exclusivity. It is divided into three parts. The first part investigates the exclusive anthropocentrism of traditional forms of moral thinking and, following the example of recent innovations in animal rights philosophy, questions the mechanisms of such exclusion. Although recent work in animal- and bio-ethics has successfully implemented strategies for the inclusion of the animal as a legitimate subject of moral consideration, its other, the machine, has remained conspicuously excluded. The second part looks at recent attempts to include these machinic others in moral thinking and critiques the assumptions, values, and strategies that have been employed by these various innovations. And the third part proposes a means for thinking otherwise. That is, it introduces an alternative way to consider these other forms of otherness that is not simply reducible to the conceptual order that has structured and limited moral philosophy’s own concern with and for others.

Rethinking the Digital Remix: Mash-ups and the Metaphysics of Sound Recording

Popular Music & Society 31(4), October 2008, pp. 489-510

Critical evaluations of audio mash-ups and remixes tend to congregate around two poles. On the one hand, these often clever recombinations of recorded music are celebrated as innovative and creative interventions in the material of bland commodity culture. On the other hand, they are often reviled as derivative, inauthentic, and illegal because they do nothing more than appropriate and reconfigure the intellectual property of others. This essay does not side with either position but identifies and critiques the common understanding and fundamental assumptions that make these two, opposed positions possible in the first place. The investigation of this matter is divided into two main parts. The first considers the traditional understanding of technologically enabled reproduction and the often unquestioned value it invests in the concept of originality. It does so by beginning with a somewhat unlikely source, Plato's Phaedrus—a dialogue that, it is argued, originally articulates the original concept of originality that both determines and is reproduced in the theories and practices of sound recording. The second part of the essay demonstrates how the audio mash-up deliberately intervenes in this tradition, advancing a fundamental challenge to the original understanding and privilege of originality. In making this argument, however, the essay does not endeavor to position the mash-up as anything unique or innovative. Instead, it demonstrates how mash-ups, true to their thoroughly derivative nature, plunder, reuse, and remix anomalies that are already available in and constitutive of
recorded music.

Žižek and the Real Hegel

Žižek's reading of Hegel is, as he and many of his readers explicitly recognize, distinctly unorthodox.  Efforts to appraise these readings often make reference to and mobilize the "real Hegel," a recognized standard and authorized understanding of Hegelian philosophy against which a particular interpretation may be compared and evaluated.  This concept of "the real," which is utilized in one way or another by both adherents and critics, is rooted in fundamental ontological assumptions that are at least as old as Plato.  Žižek's critical interventions in the ontology of the real expose these assumptions and contest their procedures and outcomes.  In doing so, Žižek not only questions the metaphysical foundations of traditional forms of criticism but provides for an alternative approach for evaluating his own readings and interpretations.  This essay applies Žižek's understanding of the Real to an evaluation of his reading of Hegelian philosophy.  In doing so, it asks a number of related questions: Who or what gets to determine and authorize the "real Hegel?"  What metaphysical propositions justify and legitimate these decisions?  And what is at stake in continuing to operate according to these standards and protocols?  In pursuing this investigation, the essay stages a critical reflection that not only reevaluates typical approaches to evaluation but sketches the basic contours of a distinctly Žižekian theory of reading and literary criticism.

Beyond Mediation: Thinking the Computer Otherwise

Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture 1(1), 2009

Whatever Media Studies 2.0 involves, one thing is certain, there is a need to confront and deal with new technologies, most notably computers and computer networks. Despite the fact that the discipline has largely marginalized these innovations, there has been some effort to incorporate the computer into both the theories and practices of media studies. This has been accomplished, at least in the United States, through the development of what is now called computer-mediated communication (CMC). CMC, which effectively understands the computer as a medium of human communication, does not necessarily institute a significant paradigm shift in media studies but accommodates the new technologies to existing structures, methodologies, and models. This essay contests and critiques this approach. It reviews the development of CMC, identifies
its structural limitations, and provides an alternative understanding of the computer that has the potential to reorient the discipline in a much more radical fashion.

The Matrix Reconsidered: Thinking Through Binary Logic in Science Fiction and Social Reality

Information, Communication & Society 11(6), September 2008

This essay employs the conceptual opposition of the red and blue pill that is presented in The Matrix trilogy as a mechanism for investigating the philosophical antagonisms and structural conflicts commonly associated with the "information society."  The text is divided into two main parts.  The first reconsiders the logical structure of this pharmacological dialectic, arguing that the choice between these two alternatives originates in the history of western thought and demonstrating how this binary arrangement organizes not just science fiction narratives but our understanding of social reality.  The second part reconsiders the choice of the red pill.  It critiques the assumed value of "true reality" that is expressed in the cinematic narrative and suggests alternative ways to think outside the box of this rather limited binary structure.  The objective of such an undertaking is not simply to question the philosophical assumptions of what has been defined as the "right choice" but to learn, through such questioning, to intervene in and undermine its very system.  The essay, therefore, suggests an alternative method to by which to challenge and critique the established network of conceptual oppositions that goes beyond mere revolution and the other familiar strategies of social change.