The Network and the Permanent Virtual Connection

The 3D virtual environment is a spurious phantasmagoria – an illusion, a distortion of reality as users engage with one another via computer terminals from remote locations across the globe.  The internet connects people.  However this very ‘connection’ demonstrates the reality of the disconnectedness of the modern age.

The physical reality of virtual space is the sum-atomic movement of electrons flowing across a complex network of electronic circuitry, mircochips, servers and telephone lines.  The virtuality of this situation is the user at his/her terminal communicating with other users as if they were present in the within space and time.

The condition is an actual-virtual paradox and Linden Lab’s Grid Server is at the centre of this actual-virtual world.

Second Life is often referred to as a game, the description is more accurately defined as a ‘sandbox game’.  The term sandbox represents the virtual world’s open-ended-ness – the lack of direction, target or agonistic notion of winners and losers that typically describe a game.  The user constructs the game for themselves.  It does involve strong play-elements and ordinary games are included within parts of Second Life.

Inspired by Neal Sephenson’s novel Snow Crash, Linden Lab created Second Life in the image of the fictional world ‘Metaverse’ as described by Stephenson, a user-defined world in which people interact, play, do business and otherwise communicate.

[10.11] Rux Roogus: “Why do you use Second Life?”

[10.12] Imogen Rieko: “It is so wonderful.  I’m never bored.

I bought a house here, for 13 quid-ish.  I’m a trekker you see.  I use it for roleplay and I have many friend for which I use Second Life to communicate with.” 

 [click for larger image]

This virtual flight path map indicates the physical locations of users encountered in Second Life.

The paths represent the electronic connection between each user as their client software comminicates with the Linden Lab servers located at Linden Lab in San Francisco, where the Second Life Grid is hosted.  The Permanent Virtual Connection [PVC] is the term the describes the path data takes through virtual network.

The advent on new information technologies has facilited communications between individuals and institutional entities enabling them to no longer be bound by contingencies of place.  This has presented opportunities for anarchic schools of thought, equiping the everyman, the amateur, the citizen journalist, with the tools and the power to reach global audiences and impact on the very substance of society.  Tactical media forms, such as Indymedia, arose in the aftermath of the Berlin wall – exemplifying the fluid, the temporal and the soft and malleable nature of reality and society through the construction and deconstruction of this great divide.   The birth of tactical media forms symbolises a celebration of media freedom and resistance to the authority. 

User generated content has erupted in the recent times of networked society. Discussion boards / blogs / social networking sites / news sites / trip planners / customer review sites / experience or photo sharing sites / any other site offering the opportunity to share knowledge and familiarity with a product or experience / games – all are forms of user generated content.  People are able to form expressions of themselvea through the content and creativity they generate and publish to the wider community.  Wikipedia is now the world’s largest encyclopedia, created by no one in particular and everyone at the same time.  The willingness for contemporary society to make their mark can on the world is perceived by Zygmunt Bauman as the ‘frantic search for identity’, but more than this, the desire to collaborate stems from a need to socialise, gain recognition for work and contribute to a democracy and equality of information and knowledge.  It exists out of a yearning for the utopia of the local community spirit, the paradise lost in the globalised world, connected via Permanent Virtual Connections.