911… Hello????

I haven’t been able to post an Abuse Report in months without my client simply immediately vanishing. When (and assuming IF) I log back on, I have to go through the “region is logging you out” routine. Here are the details of my setup. I have removed the reporting location but otherwise it’s verbatim from the Help -> About. I run Fedora Core 10.

Second Life 1.23.5 (136262) Oct 14 2009 11:42:39 (Second Life Release)
Release Notes

Built with GCC version 40102

Second Life Server 1.32.1.138516
Release Notes

CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2310 @ 1.46GHz
Memory: 2531 MB
OS Version: Linux 2.6.27.38-170.2.113.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Wed Nov 4 17:55:39 EST 2009 i686
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8400M GS/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 3.0.0 NVIDIA 180.60

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.16.4 OpenSSL/0.9.7c zlib/1.2.3 c-ares/1.4.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU
Audio Driver Version: OpenAL, version 1.1 / OpenAL Community / OpenAL Soft: ALSA Software on default
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] – 2.01.28592 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.18_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 155/9162 (1.7%)

Given that every asshole geek in SL is running Linux, why hasn’t this been noticed and FIXED. LOL, my suspicion is that very few of the Open Source fuckwads who bang on everyone else are actually using an Open Source operating system. Why doesn’t Emerald, for example, release a Linux binary? Haven’t figured out ‘make’ yet?

An amazing thing has happened…

I got two days off in a row!  The first time in months.   I spent yesterday reading Alex Garland’s The Beach and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and today I am making a brown stock from some old bones found rustling around the local grocery store.  Oh, and I am logged into Second Life and standing in the club, wondering what to do with myself while my bones roast.  I might start on building this year’s “Oh, it’s Canada” because I’m going to be super busy at the resto this month and I need my winter cabin in Second Life or it just won’t be Christmas.  I rezzed my bottle of Chateau Ferme-de-Fourmi the other day and was strangely pleased to note the 2008 vintage.  It was probably around this time last year that I “bottled” it and, as with all good wines, it tumbled me into a pleasant nostalgia for times lost. 

There’s a passage early in Brideshead Revisted that characterizes for me Second Life at its best.  Charles speaks of how “Oxford… when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth.  It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.”  It may not be readily apparent how this passage relates to Second Life.   What always impressed me about Charles’s reminiscence, apart from its elegiac poignancy, was this easily observed and yet so elegantly expressed dialectic existing between the ancient implacability of Oxford (what Adorno might have called the brutal indifference of concrete facticity) and the eternally renewed,eternally passing away generations of young scholars who make Oxford what it is (by being what it is not … and vice versa, of course!) In other words, the interdependence of Being and Becoming.  Yes, I’m on a Hegelian trip again (evidently!) but whatever you want to call it, the notion of consciousness as the dialectic overcoming of the apparent contradictions of phenomena, the “moving back and forth, into and out of” motion of opposed concepts seems to me the only philosophically complete (if not always coherent!) approach to the understanding of things.  It is this motion of concepts, more than any other approach, which provides me with my own, perhaps overly idiosyncratic, understanding of the nature of the virtual, both in itself and in its “relationship” to so-called Real Life.

Yummy for Sauces

Bah, humbug

I am enrolling in chef school tomorrow and will never  care much about virtuality and its relation to the unconscious ever again.  It will continue to fascinate me; it will continue to raise my political hackles but it will never, ever, never make me as satisfied as putting a plate of good food in front of a stranger with good credit.  As such, consider this ridiculous experiment in “sounding smart” officially done.  From here on in it’s all about recipes and the politics of location, location, location!

Human kind cannot bear very much virtuality.

I want to draw some connections.  The avatar isn’t a seperate creature, it is a different order of the self. Augmentation versus Immersion means nothing at this level.  The avatar is the self that I can look at, that I can make an object of physical intuition, thereby (apparently) rendering the self  complete, integrated, whole, something that can be ordered, understood, put in its place.  But this objectification is doomed to fail as the subject is always becoming what it is (in a sense, it is always already virtual), which is to say, that a “fixed” subject is never available for objectification except in a degraded form (although, virtuality provides the illusion of this becoming as a genuine experience, the inescapable realization that I am *not* my avatar always collapses the avatar-as-subject-become-object complex)  Nevertheless, the *desire* to experience the self as an object is always there and, for those of us who “enjoy” virtuality, that desire is more or less satisfied in Second Life.  If you have ever wondered about the prevalence of BDSM in Second Life, this is the place to start but, as interesting (or not!) as that analysis might be, there is a  more general relevance at play here.

Augmentation is an attempt to overcome virtuality by “grounding” one virtuality in another.  What we call Real World identies are no less virtual than our Second Life identities in the sense that insofar as they exist they exist only symbolically, in language.  Why is such a re-doubling of the virtual necessary for the augmentationist, what is being accomplished in this move?

once again, have to come back to this as I am working on my club which is becoming the ultimate cool looking explosion of light in SL

Code and Cathexis

I’ve seen the locution “code is law” so often that, like any good piece of propaganda, I believed it meant something but was never entirely sure what was being said!  So, what does “code is law” actually mean?  Here are some tentative ideas (the list is hardly exhaustive!):

Political – programmers make policy because programmers make stuff out of code.

Theological – “code” is a kind of substance that “makes up” the world, therefore, the “law” of that world is the “law of code”

Tautological – “code” and “law”are just two words for the same thing (what that thing is still up for metaphysical speculation!)

Performative -  the statement doesn’t really have a meaning in the traditional sense; rather, it performs a function (much like code itself!)

 

Ok, Scott, you got your wish.

I haven’t posted in ages, that’s true. I haven’t even visited this blog since writing my last post. I did say that the post was going to take a long time to write and it certainly has. I should point out that I have posted further instalments but they wound up on Dusan’s blog rather than my own. If you have read them you will know that I am confused and philosophically unsteady; it’s taking quite a lot to get my words together. Here are some cheap excuses for that. Firstly, I have been working 6 and 7 days a week for the past month; some half days, some double shifts (10 hours) and I haven’t had the time or energy for much SL related activity. The other reason is that I have been doing a lot of directed reading (some might even call it research!)

Rightly or wrongly, I have more and more come to understand virtuality in Hegelian terms; yes, even in the crude thesis-antithesis-synthesis form of the “dialectic”. Consider it for a moment and I think you will at least find the notion interesting, if not utterly compelling. I am not going to develop these notions much further here. Consider this a progress report more than a substantive post. My desire is to write a thesis length essay over the coming months; as such, I am not so interested in posting abortive ideas and flights of fancy as I am prone to do when writing on blogs.

So here’s a reading list:

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory
Adorno’s Minima Moralia (Yes, quite a lot of Adorno!)
Lacan’s Ecrits (which should come as no surprise to anyone who has read what I posted on Dusan’s blog!)
Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus
Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus
Zizek’s Organs Without Bodies (a necessary companion to the Deleuze and Guattari books)
Zizek’s The Ticklish Subject

Ok, those are the main texts informing my current thinking about Second Life. I am not reading these texts systematically but, I like to believe, I *am* reading them deeply. Of these texts, only the Zizek is “new” to me and I am loving his writing as a counterpoint to my rather obvious attachment to Critical Theory. There is another work that influences my thinking here because its a book that has influenced my thinking in general ever since first reading it 15 years ago. I am speaking of Jane Jacob’s Death and Life of the Great American Cities.

What I want to do is consider Second Life (virtual worlds in general? Is it necessary to survey them all?) from the perspective of “classical” philosophy i.e. with respect to the classic problems presented by philosophical thinking and, when that perspective proves insufficient (insofar as it might answer the what but it can’t answer the why), shift to a psychoanalytic model of the avatar as the attempt (and ultimate failure) to re-subjectivize the reified subject. What is an avatar but an objectivization of the subject that is, neverthless, felt (and thought) to possess the spontaneous autonomy that is the mark of the genuine subject? Ok, I am spinning off into Pop-Hegelianism again. These words *do* have substantial meaning. More reading and more (offline) writing will, I hope, make this sound less like the product of an over-excited undergraduate drunk on sleeplessness and Heidegger.

This post is taking a long time to form. I have just woken up and my tea is still too hot to drink down in one gulp so I am writing this nonsense to get my fingers limbered up while waiting for my brain to sync. I suppose it’s appropriate for what I am trying to say that I approach the subject in a hypnopompic state. Dusan writes extensively on the metaphysics of Second Life, more, I think, than any other prominent SL blogger and, whenever I think about what he writes, there is always one category that insists on coming to the fore, namely, the psychoanalytic conception of desire.

My schooling in philosophy predisposes me to think my experience of Second Life through its traditional categories. It’s far too early for Heidegger but if human being is that being for which the question of the meaning of being is the fundamental condition for its being then the question of the meaning of the being of avatars, insofar as the avatar can be said to be an ecstatic mode of being, is a question begging to be asked (I’m sure that sentence would read better had I written it in German!) Anyway, I was trying to illustrate how easy and enticing it is to fit our Second Life experience into the grander philosophical situation. The problem is that the fit is never a comfortable one for me. If there is a world behind the scenes (as Nietzsche so eloquently dismissed the realm of metaphysics) at play in Second Life then its locus isn’t the in-itself of the prim, it lies elsewhere!

I am sitting, sipping my tea, and Heidegger is beckoning me, asking that I go on to flesh out what started as a quick example of how easy it is to speculate on Second Life using his language BUT I am going to stop where I am. It’s been a while since I formally studied him (and those thinkers most associated with him) but I remember that while reading Being and Time that I was only really being given an ontological taxonomy. I had a hard time finding the energy, if you will, that drove the whole thing. I seem to recall a disclaimer somewhere in the book to the effect that it was never his purpose to identify the agency but, merely, to document the structure of being.

Bugger, I hit Publish instead of Preview that time! I do have to break off now and go work in the real world for a spell (and just as I was getting into the groove!) I feel a powerful need to finish this particular trip, though, so I will file an update in the near future. I hadn’t even gotten near to where I wanted to get.

The Logic of Escalation

The Big Stick

My neighbours in Ravenglass have a “Soviet” submarine parked beside my house. It’s kinda small and grotty looking with all those exposed rivets but, you know, it’s *funny as hell* and I narf every time I see it. Anyway, they seem to be a playful group of kids so I built this thing. It’s called a Los Angeles Class Attack Submarine and was built by the Americans to hunt and kill Soviet missile subs. I thought it would make a nice match; the problem is that I built it almost life sized (that’s me poking my head out of the conning tower) and it’s far too large to fit in Ravenglass.

Losing My Religion (UPDATE!)

Err, my faith actually but anyway. That awful sex store has now moved closer to our parcel in Moraine so the freak responsible for it, you know, took the time to pick it up from one parcel and jam it down again right on the parcel boundary with ours. It’s been abuse reported several times over several days and nothing at all happens. I just don’t get that. It’s a clear violation of the law in SL and it goes utterly unpunished. It isn’t a resident to resident dispute, it isn’t some murky grey area where a Linden has to decide if someone is being “intolerant” or “disruptive”. It’s about selling nude pictures of age-unverified (I would like to point out!) “teens” in an area marked as Mature and not Adult (i.e. on the mainland, duh!) Maybe we should try reporting it as an ageplay violation although that seems bizarre since it is *already* a clear violation.

You know, with all the grief that Prokofy Neva has had to put up with since the SLCC chalking incident and the Lab’s total non-response to it, it’s really starting to look like the Lab just doesn’t care, or worse, is wilfully ignoring the legitimate concerns of its law abiding residents in favour of… in favour of God knows what – anarchism? I just don’t know. A fanboy would point out that they “just don’t have the resources” or some such other retarded claim that doesn’t require refutation. Anyway, I have this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that something has happened in Linden land and the TOS has as much meaning to the average Linden as the Bill of Rights had to Bush Co. Then again, I have a sneaking suspicion that if I were to invoke the law of the jungle and go after these abusers myself that I would be the one suddenly “worthy” of a TOS suspension. That’s how things roll, I guess.

Philip has said that the purpose of Second Life is to make a better world. We make things better by improving on all the good stuff we already have. I read an interesting rule of thumb (for telescope makers but which applies very well to software engineering also): “it takes less time to make a 4 inch mirror and then a 6 inch mirror than it does to make a 6 inch mirror” In other words, we iterate toward the “better”, we don’t smash everything down and then make “great leaps forward”. It makes no sense in any practise, not in engineering, not in politics, not in “better world making”. So, Philip, to make Second Life a better world, start with all the stuff that makes the real world better now than what it was, say, 70 years ago in fascist Germany – MAKE THE RULE OF LAW FUNDAMENTAL TO SECOND LIFE and then get the fuck rid of that creepy porn shop beside my parcel in Moraine! Thanks.

Update:

I just got an IM from a new neighbour saying “Hi, I got rid of that terrible mall belonging to the previous owner of the parcel beside yours” So the disgusting sex shop is gone and we now have a new neighbour who *gets* what it is to be a neighbour! I am so relieved and my faith in people is restored.

Oh yes, I created a new open group called Free Citizens Solidarity and I rented a parcel in Ravenglass (originally just to express solidarity with Prok in his struggle with the Woodybury University banalities) that is going to be our “headquarters”.

The End of Civilization (in Moraine) Update

I am going to name names in this update because my client crashes every time I try to abuse report this dipshit. Now, how can the Lindens make such a big deal about adult content and let this little shrine to the banality of evil stand after multiple abuse reports (from others)? The proprietress’s name is Tina Seymour and I would try to work this out in IM but I suspect she is too stupid to understand the issues.

Weito has been forced to move out of the sim entirely due to the combined grieftardery of these new “neighbours”. I hate people.