AW: [syndicate] Trans.: [thingist] IAM SPEAKER SERIES: SarahRobbins, March 12, 2007

[Alan Sondheim]

On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, fmadre at free.fr wrote:

> I think the worst thing with sl type of business ventures is that, 
> patrick, you are being controlled by them, controlled by the software. 
> you might feel it is a world where you freely roam and within which you 
> experience what you want and you tend to blend with the "atmosphere". 
> this atmosphere is totally man made, the software is designed by the 
> owners of the business to their goals. their goals are, as you know, to 
> first gain a lot of users and make a lot of marketing noise (they are 
> succeeding in this) and second to make money out of their business with 
> those users. the software is their control tool over you the users of 
> the service.
>
Not that this is my discussion, but I think you're overly simplistic here 
- you're not controlled by the software any more than you're controlled by 
a hammer, which is also produced, say, by Sears. It's dialogic; you do 
what you want within limits and vice versa. It's interesting that SL is as 
free as it is. I think far too much is made of control btw in general; 
almost anything can be used intelligently. As far as man-made goes, so is 
NYC where I live, and I'm controlled by the corporations running the 
subway system, but I go where I want. I think you're confusing these 
environments with panoptical phenomenologies, which don't necessarily 
hold.

> it is generally a bad idea, I find, to delve willingly in areas where one is 
> being controlled. it is generally a good idea, I find, to resist any control 
> and even better to avoid controlled areas.

Well, I go into the space and don't feel controlled. Now you may counter 
that of course the space is designed to make you feel such - but that is 
the same ideological position of marxism/ psych-a, etc. : you're resisting 
or doing your own thing but you're within the aegis of this or that. 
What's overlooked is that this might not be true at all; I know people in 
espionage who were 'monitoring' the net and found it impossible for 
example and this was in the days of nsf and the telcom.

Better than your generalization - ok, I go into SL - how _exactly_ am I 
being controlled? In detail, not this generalization. The fact I can't 
enter certain spaces just means that they're members-only and I can 'make' 
one myself. 
>
> what areas in SL are uncontrolled and unmonitored ? none.
> everything you engage in there is known and logged and this data is crossed 
> with other data that you willingly give away.
>
This is just not true since I know people who _are_ trying to monitor it. 
And where do you get the idea that everything is logged? My movements for 
example? Since they're complex bvh files, in just five minutes I've used a 
lot of megabytes.

> PLUS it looks like shit!

Well this is aesthetics; most of it seems far too clever to me but not all 
of it.

> I understand this, and please understand that I am as curious as you are. 
> that's the good side of all this over-coverage of SL: my curiosity is 
> satisfied without me having to go there at all.
>
Just like people who want to understand, say, the Vietnamese - why bother 
looking/talking to them?

> it looks to me that people have too powerful machines and they don't know 
> what to do with this hardware power. they feel they need to consume the 
> hardware power with new software fuel. some, kof kof, new media type of 
> people are very prone to technological consumption for its own sake. they are 
> going to be the first out there who get the new shelter... for them, 
> participating to old style mailing lists is so passe
>

Actually SL runs on very little much to my surprise. And I doubt the 
people on SL have participated particularly in email lists - on top of 
that, the worst crap I've experienced was that period on nettime - email 
lists are far more controlled and hierarchical than anything I've seen in 
SL.


As far as Dick goes, until I read a bit of the old anti-semitism there, I 
liked him. But the christology really got to me in the end; at this point 
I can't read any of it, prescient or not.

- Alan, apologies for butting in here