Sometimes I feel like Sancho Panza fighting the windmills. My favourite windmill being the terminology of immersionism/augmentationism. One would expect that the obvious mistake in the terminology like that one is will be cleared easily, so we can continue thinking and discussing the problem more effectively. But no, it doesn't happen.
It's not that I haven't said it loud enough and often enough. Something else is the case here.
It's not that the people who are calling themselves "immersionists" are not aware that they are augmenting themselves in virtual worlds. If you talk to them more than five minutes you'll see that augmentation is the corner stone of their existence. Same goes to the other side. As many times in history, terms are not used by the reason and logic. They are used as a tool to define tribes and make a conflict possible. They are flags. As such, they don't need to have a meaning but just a color to help differentiate "us" from "them".
Let's not lie to ourselves. That conflict is important. It, and it's outcome, defines the nature of the virtual realm we're conquering these years. And each side hopes to make it their way. Between them stands the few of us, choking in the fake definitions and wondering when will we clear the grounds and start doing some serious and useful job. But you know what's the fate of those that stands between confronted sides screaming for a bit of reason? They usually get killed in the cross-fire. Or, with a bit of luck, they keep their heads low and wait for the tribes to get tired and out of ammunition. So when they finally stop shooting nonsense around, we can take a look over the burned grounds and start repairing the damage. When will that happen?
We don't know when it will happen. But luckily, there is a bit of light on the horizon. Gwyneth Llewelyn calls it post-immersionism.
I believe that the dominant attitude will be to trust more and more what people do on the Internet (and write about themselves, and are peer-reviewed that way). We can get way more data out of the Internet about some person or some company than using any other method. In a sense, the “person” or “company” becomes the data we read about them on the Internet. And thus we’re back to the point where we started: once we cross back from the digital world into the physical world, and we begin to forge relationships on the physical world because of the ones we forged on the digital one, then we become post-immersionists: the digital world is where the focus is, the physical world — and what we do to establish relationships in the physical world — becomes less important.
It is just a matter of time. People are prone to distrust new things and their habits makes them show the lack of thinking and understanding.
While our society has fully embraced phone calls as being part of our digital self, and is slowly moving ahead to do the same with emails (specially once we can get rid of all those spammers), things like Group IM on MSN/Gtalk/Yahoo or even virtual worlds like Second Life are still too new for us to fully embrace it. But… it’ll come.
It will come. We will know that immersion is nothing more than getting the most of the virtual environment and that augmentation is the case in more than 95% of digital appearances. And that one can be both at the same time. We'll find it normal to immerse and be augmented at the same time. Because immersion is a prerequisite for the quality of the experience and the avatar, no matter how different from the human, is it's extension – augmentation.
Thanks for the heads-up, dandellion :) I wouldn’t be so harsh as claiming that “the discussion is not over”, but I hoped at least to point a way out of it, as you suggested…
It’s far from being over… thanks for putting it back on the track. With a bit of luck, we can start it now.
I don’t think this will ever be over.
As you correctly stated, fights give people a good excuse to stop thinking and wage war to each others so that they have how to spend their time.
So, yes, I agree that this conflict is important to us (tough what makes me mad and laugh at the same time it see how people really can get angry when talking about this and forgot that *real* people are dying for *real*, right these days… that is a *real* – not virtual – “conflict”) but at the same time I am one of those who is stuck in the middle.
Afraid of raising my head, uncertain about how to move. Sometimes, I feel it would be really wrong to make hypothesis about not even a RL meeting but maybe MSN (ok, that’s a lie, I love Gtalk) or an email address…
Luckily I still manage to spend my time with smart people like you are, my dear long time IMM/AUGM friend :)
Well, there always will be a few that will insist on the conflict. But there is drama. What I’d like to see ended is that terminology confusion. Where’s the difference? One is insisting on current state to keep private issues (and I won’t give examples because some will probably interpret them as insults and privacy breach), the other is mess that harms the whole world and the theory few of us are typing thousands of characters about. I don’t care on personal affairs of other people as long as they don’t conflict with my work.
Troublesome as the somewhat bent definitions were in the original post, I don’t think the larger debate is ever going to go away. It touches too many intellectual and spiritual issues (illusion, truth, identity, self, perception, etc.) that have touched human beings ever since the first time someone told a story around the campfire.
The conflict exists and continues to exist because people come to virtual worlds for different reasons. Some come as form of escapism in a search for something completely new and as a result they abhor being asked a/s/l?. Others see a/s/l? as being a perfectly valid question just like they would ask a stranger in RL what they did for a job.
Telephones and IM’s are different from meeting someone in a VW because they are not begun randomly. Telephone calls are begun for a reason and made to a person you have made an effort to contact (you found their number and dialled it). Who picks up a telephone and randomly dials numbers hoping to have a conversation with someone who answers?
How would you feel if someone randomly rang you up and asked you what your age, sex and location was? I would not be comfortable at all. And yet a large part of SL’s population feel entitled to know those same details from people they have randomly encountered.
This is, I think, the core of the immersionist vs augmentationalist argument; whether you have a right to ask strangers to "Tell me your personal details".
Ananda, there are two aspects of this problem. One is holding all the intellectual and psychological issues you mention. And that is not going to go away. Nor, personally, I want them to go away, they are making my second life interesting.
But the other, camps conflict based on false and troublesome original definitions is just a time waster and drama ground which is polluting the space for the examining of the first one.
Faerie, you are right. There are two groups of people having different ideas about the world. I object calling them immersionists and augmentatioists, those terms doesn’t describe them, they just threw fog about what’s going on and where is the root of the conflict. More and more I am sure those bad terms are adding to the conflict and make living together and sharing the grid harder.
If we see the meta as something apart from the real world, then we must make a new sense out of it.
But I think it’s not separate, If you want to know what meta is here for, you should also ask what the ‘real’ world is here for.
The definitions (for me) are that immersion is ‘moving into’ the vw, new life sort of, and augmentation is ‘using’ the vw as a add-on to our existing life, compensating but not reinventing a new self.
Augmentation and immersion are merely techniques, the goals they achieve are personal.
And personally, I’m either one, neither or both, depends on the day of the week, my mood, and who’s online.
And I go into SL, I do what I do, but SL comes back with me to my physical world too, it affects my ‘Real life’, even when I’m not online, how should we define this? how it affects me? which areas of my life?
I came as an immersionist (well, I hoped), then I mostly augmented myself (hey it’s NOT a bad thing!…), and now I find It’s just me there, nothing more, SL became my ‘phone call’ (okay, not always, I admit).
I’m always (trying) to keep in mind, no matter what illusion my senses sell me, that there are people behind them, at least for now. I’m looking forward to meeting a cute AI tho :)
Agreed, those two are techniques, and what we use them for is entirely up to each of us. And, there is nothing to stop us from using them both at the same time.
More I think about it, more flaws in each extreme I see. Being 100% on one side without any of the other is simple contradiction. Usually, people think that immersion and augmentation of one’s life adds up to 100%, thus forming a spectrum of gray levels between the extremes.
Quite contrary, more you are in one more you are on the other as well. More you immerse in the world, more you give from your self, more you augmented you are. And vice versa. More of yourself you give in the world, deeper you go.