Gorillas and Swans (1 hour)

Returned to moose beach, a busy place, lots of people, mainly women.  Some not wearing any clothes.  Huge gorillas walking about.  One guy talking in the background telling someone else that he tries to help new comers find new clothes and get some money.  Interesting discussion about accents – between a guy from the US (Boston) and a woman from the UK (Essex).  Trying to decide who’s accent came first. I need to go somewhere else...

Teleported to INSILICO.

Teleported to Eternal Paradiso Disco Club.

Teleported to Hikaru – floated in the river next to a swan…

Virtual Visits (4 hours)

Arrived back in Second Life.  First, got insulted by a bunch of people who were hanging around in the spot I logged-off.  Feeling very self-concious.  It’s particularly bad when you can hear people using ‘voice’ chat about you.  More bad language.  Whilst I was feeling more self-conscious, generally in this virtual world people behave more freely. 

Changed my appearance again and edited some of the preferences such as removing the typing animation. Doing anything to get accustomed to the user interface so that I don’t look such a novice.

Teleported to Jade’s Jazz Lounge, not very densely populated.  Played the grand piano in the club (see picture) had a drink at the bar.

Went to another popular chat spot - Degrand.  Actually had some meaningful conversations about music. 

Visited another place but there was no one around.  Difficult to imagine why anyone would want to navigate to some of the places in Second Life merely to experience the environment without socializing.  In a strange way the chat is what makes it appealing.

Went dancing at the Beachwood club.  Less conversation here, more dancing.  Couldn’t get my dance moves to activate without the programme crashing.

Newbie Still (3 hours)

Downloaded new viewer (that’s going to make life easier!?).  Returned to Waterhead point.  Again, there were quite a few avatars present – more gathered around, enjoying each other’s company, but without the same level of conversation as last time.  Chilled dance music playing. Took some photos for posterity.  Hung with a strange bunch.  Conversation started flowing when an obnoxious teenager arrived - 'French Tophat'.  He was quite vulgar.  Begging the question as to whether I should have challenged his behaviour or not.  (Perhaps I should next time).  Still showing my inexperience, probably not ready to be out in public yet.  Teleported back home to Korea (help island).  Had a conversation with a newbie, ‘Aqua Moonwinder’.  I asked to be her friend, but she refused.  The duality between the real and the virtual fluctuates. People are cautious or curious about the person behind the avatar.  I heard many people talking about this Saturday night as if they were actually out 'drinking' and socializing.

Waterhead (1 hour)

Edited my appearance then Teleported to Waterhead conversation point.  Tried to strike up some conversations - failed.  Everyone was talking there own language, and it wasn't always very polite.  Saw some strange characters indeed.

Daveed Choovio (1 hour)

Last Monday Daveed Choovio, my Avatar, arrived in Second Life and walked around for a little while.  I was initially really frightened to be embarking on the Second Life adventure, there is a real sense of vulnerability and openness. All of a sudden an extension of my existence is available to interact and be manipulated freely by myself and others.  However, with the hidden alias and the far-fetched out-fit, it feels nothing more than a game at the moment.

Virtual World - Week Three

Virtual Community

‘If you try to build community you break it.  If you love your brothers and sisters, then you build community’ 

- Reverend Mother

‘A group of ‘I’s brought together to be a group of ‘Thou’s’ 

- Bonhoeffer building on Buber.

Social models of the Trinity and questions of presence and relation, hypostasis and ekstasis (Zizioulas), on-line.    

What does the incarnation have to say to the question of virtual existing!?

How do you do service on-line?

What would happen if technology developed to the extent that we could engage with each other pseudo-physically?

But, what would be our the reasons for doing so?

Pneumatology and virtual reality - an existential deposit, way of being.

What parallels are there between virtual reality and relationships and the way Christians live in the light of eschatological anticipation of final consumation.

What is community?

space - geography

time - history

shared interests

shared narratives

Trinity a model?

positive and negative implications

dialectic, dialogical and diachronic

(see Ollerton, 2002).

Social network sites.

Different levels of openness.  Dealing with complaints and disquiet online.

(see Rice 2009, on Facebook)

What is the relationship between Facebook use and human development into adolescents.

The taxonomy of friendship - a new social structuralism. Do public friendships really work?  (Rosen cited in Rice, p 113)

See Hipps on ‘meaningful mission’.  He highlights four aspects that you need: 1) shared history/narrative, 2) permanence, 3) proximity 4) shared imagination (in Rice 2009, p 163).  Need to know how he arrives at this conclusion. 

Second Life http://secondlife.com/?v=1.1

Virtual World - Week Two

Ethics and New Technology

A Challenge or celebration?

Does virtual technology elevate or relegate the Lordship of Christ?  This is a key question for discerning a proper theological ethic of the virtual world.

‘So what’s so great about being on-line?!’ - increases our presence in the world, increases the presence of the world.

Changes human doing, being, seeing, knowing, relating (a total environment).

Ethical implications are different on-line - choices (consequences) and character (virtue).

Ethics follow technological innovation.

From the inception of on-line communities there was not the same interest in ethics? [See... the first Constitution on on-line existing.]

Immersion

A tale of two worlds and the ethical cross-over.

Society does not attribute value to virtues, such as purity.

Internet as a drug.

Wisdom and the web?

The power of a constant environment (Jacques Ellul)

“A fish discovers water” - we need to recognize the technology, need to see the choices.

Technology removes choice, but also saturates us with potential choices.

Defined by technology - the need for efficiency (Ellul) 

Heidegger on freedom and neutrality.

The worse thing is to regard technology as neutral in terms of its ethical implications and not as powerful force.

Efficiency versus theological propriety.  Need to critique use of technology in order to remain human (McCloughry).

Ethical Issues

• Content
• Choice
• Community
• Control 
• Culture
• Church

Internet a real world, but a different world.  The same problems, manifested on a different platform.  Accountability the antedote to ethical failure and addictions.  (see Augustine on addictions).

Postman, Technopoly

Technique - a mode of expression

Technology - the means of expression

Technopoly - the domination of technology over human expression, the point at which you can longer see it.

Technology a distraction from being present (Schapiro and 2 John 12).  Once again trinitarian and incarnational theology have something to say to this.

Virtual World - Week Two

Philosophy and New Technology

Link between the technological revolution and postmodernism

The virtual world - ‘in which we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.28)

Is it possible to separate media from message? (Pattison, p 34)

Waters, From Human to Post-human

Human relationship to reality and nature traditionally one of power.

A paradigm shift from providence to progress.

‘Progress was clearly the most prized legacy of the Enlightenment...’ (Waters, p 12)

Pattison, Thinking about God in an Age of Technology

Assesses modern theology (‘the view from the deck’) in the light of the technological (‘engine room’) revolution (pp 59-63)

Pattison refers to Bultmann on the problems of modernity and New Testament world-view (Pattison, p 33)

Some post-modern thinkers want to rebel against the modernist technological culture.  They question the place of scientific subject/object knowledge.  Interestingly in doing so they - Derrida, for example - often find themselves in league with religious sensibility and faith.

So, is post-modern thinking - liberating or hinderance for Christian apologetics?

Jean-Jacques Rosseau, the Romatics 

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

All critique the modernist paradigm - ‘view from nowhere’.  subject/object.  Naive (see Kevin Vanhoozer on Gadamer for example)

Schroeder (German radical hermeneutician) makes an interesting proposal about the importance of embodiment for epistemology.  What does this have to say to virtual human existing?

Foucault (French post-structuralist).  ‘knowledge and truth... are caught up in power struggles’ (Danaher, p 24).  Foucault’s view of truth intrinsically linked to power games.  What does this say to Christ’s claim to be truth, and the way that God’s truth is ultimately manifested in the weakness of the crucifixion?

Postmodernism about fragmentation and flux there is no stability or centre (Kramer).  We can only have an indirect relationship with reality through language and media. 

Does the philosophical analysis of our indirect grasp of reality resonate with virtual technology?

Yes, but did it not before.  Does not virtual technology merely exaggerate the distance between the ‘I’ and the ‘real’, because it gives individuals greater power to control or manipulate what is potentially real, at least indirectly.

Virtual World - Week One

Indicative definitions

• An accessible community that exists in cyberspace
• Worlds in a digital dimension
• A disembodied, immaterial, non-physical place of human existing
• People engaging with other people, information, ideas and entertainment via the internet

Bible as cultural artefact

Accessing the Bible in the ancient world

Patterns of devotion directed by technology.

Internet the result of a confluence of technologies akin to the arrival of the Book.

Virtual Revelation documentary BBC TWO http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/

Personal Identity

• Embodiment
• Reality vs the Virtual
• Belonging (community)
• Actions/Interactions (grooming)
• Communication - call and response intrinsic (see McFadyen)

Virtual World and theology (Trinity, christology/incarnation, creation, soteriology and anthropology)