CRDM 701

Week 10 - Jon

As I read for this week, I was reminded of the concept of boundaries that I was thinking about last week. How are boundaries perceived and navigated in virtual environments? In the virtual, it also seems individuals are more driven to circumvent boundaries, to find a way around them. Dawn provided a nice example of her playing Super Mario Brothers and hitting an invisible wall. Mario can jump, swim, eat strange mushrooms, get bigger, and even fly, but he will never cross that barrier, regardless of how hard he might try.

There is a mindset of being limitless that comes from the VR context. After our discussions with Dr. Hillis, I tried to think about why it is that virtual spaces seem so, well, large, even infinite. When one puts on a VR helmet, there is almost a promise of a space without constraints, or without the same constraints that we face everyday in the real. In Paul Adams's "Network Topologies and Virtual Place," we learned about how the vary language, terms such as "cyberspace, electronic frontier, information superhighway," used with online environments creates this sense of vastness and freedom (88). The virtual and its many places are presented as an open landscape for frolicking.

In the real, outside of the Web, I am limited in what I can and cannot do. I can't, for example, fly around on my bike, jump off of buildings, drive tanks, etc. The reasons for these limitations are obvious: I face constraints in regards to transportation, sensation, and society. I don't want to feel pain, so I don't jump off the building. My bike can't fly, so I pedal it on the road to class, although, I'm not going to lie, that would be awesome. These barriers constantly act upon us. So, when we put on a VR helmet, we see it as as an opportunity to remove these constraints, and finally to do what it is that we want to do. On the surface, the virtual world is a playground of possibilities. It seems like there are no boundaries, and there should be no boundaries because the experience is so, for lack of a better term, virtual.

We have no choice but to compare the virtual to the real. Most of the constraints of the real must not exist in a world that is purely virtual and visual, right? Wrong. You fly around in the virtual and, eventually, you are going to find the barrier, the edge of the universe. The invisible wall between what you can reach and what you cannot is shattering. We are instantly reminded that the virtual is not real, and it too has barriers, and perhaps, now that we know about them and perhaps use the virtual for an escape, may be even greater than that of the real. Yes, the virtual is a playground: it has a sandbox and swings.

So, regardless of our language, there are constraints in the virtual space, Adams indicates how "Virtual place metaphors are employed when the guidebook to America Online. . .describes its 'people connection' as consisting of a lobby and adjoining rooms" (89). In such a virtual environment, there is a beginning, the lobby, and a set place to go, one of the adjoining rooms, which is just as limited as the real, a pattern that is present throughout the Net. In "The World of the Extensible Self," Adams indicates how "virtual spaces provide cues to the landmarks, paths, edges, and so on that one might find in physical spaces" (18). Indeed, search engines, for example, channel Internet users in very straight, "popular" paths, constructing a limited way of traveling through the muck. We know the paths because they are presented to us as a listing of search results. The further down we move through the results, perceivably, the closer to the edges we become. The very last result, in our mind, represents, metaphorically, the least relevant search result for our topic on the entire Internet, a humorous thought to consider. If an invisible barrier like that of VR and video games were present, one might see the list of links, but click them and find them unclickable. The barrier is not visually apparent, yet it exists and prevents what seems accessible.

Latour's article, which had me laughing quite a bit, provides a simple scenario and the complicated dilemma surrounding how certain human and nonhuman factors contribute to the solution: "Walls are a nice invention, but if there were no holes in them, there would be no way to get in or out; they would be mausoleums or tombs" (258). Doors provide a physical outlet between spaces, one that we take for granted. In their absence, we immediately seek them out. So, it makes sense in the virtual that once presented with a boundary, visible or not, we are immediately searching for a solution. When, really, the only door that we will find is to take off the VR helmet, or turn off the computer game and return to the real. In such a moment, the virtual and its "frontiers" and "super highways" become smaller and constrained.

Posted at 01:58PM Oct 31, 2007 by jtburr in Week 10  |  Comments[1]