Thursday, May 13, 2010

Augmentationism

Dusan Writer wrote a really interesting piece about the direction that the Lindens seem to be taking SL: integrating it into our offworld-but-still-digital real lives. I find this direction really worrying, because I do not wish to have my lives commingled in this way. There are some people offworld whom I tell about my time in SL, just as there are some people inworld who have also met my meat avatar, but that's as far as it goes. Right now, I control who knows what about me, and I wish it to stay that way. The Lindens' new plan feels like it will take that out of my hands.

Augmentationism is one of a set of words describing people's opinions (or opinion-driven actions) about what SL is for. Augmentationists believe that so-called real life is the only valid reality, that anything that happens outside of RL cannot possibly be other than a more-or-less meretricious form of entertainment. Hence they believe that SL exists to enrich and enhance our offworld lives. They believe that SL has no separate existence, no culture of its own, and no community.

I suppose there's no reason why an augmentationist could not have a differently-gendered avatar or be another species, but those whom I have met tend to believe that these things are false, morally wrong. Some even reproduce their RL appearance in their avatar (though these too are often suspiciously tall and fit and beautiful).

(The opposite of augmentationism is immersionism, but that's a subject for another day.)

11 comments:

  1. It's ironic that, in the years since Bennetsen first published the "immersionist/augmentationist" paradigm, other people have had an easier time defining augmentationism than the man who coined the term. Yours, above, is the best I've seen so far.

    I mused on the topic in two blogs, "There is no wall" and "Synthesis"... but permit me to premier the following aphorism:

    "Immersionists" play in SL, as in a playground; "Augmentationists" play with SL, as if it were a toy.

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  2. Oh, I do like that aphorism, that sums it up very well. Mind if I use it? (with attribution, of course :)

    Thanks for the compliment, and the greater compliment of following my blog.

    Note to self: I need to talk about play as a concept in SL.

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  3. Permission granted :)

    And thanks in return for reading and commenting on "Synthesis".

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  4. OMG, I'm an immersionist, call the SL police!!! :)

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  5. Is there room somewhere for someone who believes that what happens in SL is part of real life?

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  6. Anonymous, that would be quite a few of us :)

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  7. My SL is very real to me, Anon. You are far from being alone in that.

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  8. About Lalo's aphorism, quoting it here:
    "Immersionists" play in SL, as in a playground; "Augmentationists" play with SL, as if it were a toy.

    I feel like I do both of those at the same time.

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  9. @Fael: I believe that all of us do both at the same time, in a blend which depends on the moment.

    The problem with all such categorizations is: no matter how much those who coin them caution that they are the extreme ends of a continuum, they still tend to be taken by later readers as "either/or".

    As I said in my own blog on the subject: If one were red, and the other blue, we would all be some shade of purple.

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  10. Ah yes of course. Thank you for the clarification (and fast response, I was only just coming back to enable email subscription and here your answer is already :)

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  11. There is a postgrad dissertation waiting to be written about our [species] propensity to see life in binary absolutes.

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