Terminology Analysis of Coming of Age in Second Life, part 2

Continued from part 1.

VIRTUAL: as used in the context of "virtual world."  

"Virtual" is a term too-often associated with virtual reality, specifically human interactions with a computer simulation through immersive interfaces like data gloves, motion trackers, and stereoscopic headsets. Like Boellstorff, I've encountered confusion from others when discussing virtual environments (even the name of this blog) that have nothing to do with VR goggles and other equipment. VR technology should be distinct from virtual worlds. Boellstorff calls for a "rehabilitation and refinement" of the term "virtual," and I agree. However, I have to differ with some of his reasoning.

No, not that type of virtual.
Photo: NASA, "The Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW)," 1990 (source)

There are several meanings for the word "virtual." Colloquially, it may be used to mean "almost" (as in, "this task is virtually impossible."). But, a virtual world is not "almost" a world - it is a world unto itself (Boellstorff makes this clear, as seen in part 1).

"Virtual" may be understood by what it is not. Where are you when you log off from Second Life? Residents call the world we physically inhabit as "Real Life," "First Life," "The Physical World," or "The Real World." These antonyms for a virtual world imply that technology makes a life less real. "Real" becomes a synonym for "offline."

But, as I hinted at in the previous post, the virtual is also "real." As Gilles Deleuze states, the opposite of the virtual is the "actual."

The virtual is opposed not to the real but to the actual. The virtual is fully real in so far as it is virtual... The virtual must be defined as strictly a part of the real object (Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, (trans. 1994), pg. 260).

Thus, the Actual World is defined as the place of human culture not realized by a computer. "Virtual" may connote approaching the "actual" without ever arriving there. As Boellstorf states, without this gap, there is no distinguishing "online" from "offline." In this contrast with the actual, the "almost" meaning of the world virtual has some significance for these purposes. I agree and prefer to use "actual" instead of "real" and also was inspired by Deleuze in this regard, but is not really helpful here.

Deleuze, inspired by Bergson, wrote of a metaphysical virtuality unlike what we deal with in digital media. Instead, virtuality is a part of reality that generates the actual (real, extended objects... what we may think of as our present reality). The virtual actually exists contemporaneously with, but is different from, the actual. Taking Bergson's vision of how memory works, recollecting some past event means to look back at a layer of this totality of the past, this virtuality. In its totality, this past (virtuality) has led to (actualized into) what is now. It cannot be said that the past and present are separated (they are contemporaneous). Both past and present are real, yet they are also separate (virtual vs. actual).

The above is my understanding of Deleuze's work, which doesn't seem very applicable to our notion of virtual worlds.

Contrast it with Denis Berthier's look at virtuality from a scientific, technological, artistic, and technological points of view in his Meditations on the real and the virtual (2004). He states that the virtual is that that is "not real," yet displays the qualities of reality (like a mirror image). However, our perception of the virtual is as if it is real. Does our perception "realize" (as opposed to actualize) the virtual into a kind of reality? I don't know if Berthier would agree as his work has not been translated from the original French and all I can go by are other researchers' comments about the book.

Sociologist Rob Shields (of the University of Alberta) asks the question "What is 'the virtual'?" in his book, aptly named The Virtual (2003). He cites many examples of "the virtual" from the past, such as realistically painted trompe-l'oeil artworks and panoramas, that could constitute a non-digital type of virtual environment. He argues that the opposite of the virtual is the concrete, what might colloquially be called the "tangible, actually real." However, the virtual is no less real than the concrete (which, of course, leads to the question, "What is reality?"). He posits that the virtual and the concrete are both different really existing forms, as opposed to the non-existing abstractions and probabilities.

This requires Shields to develop a more sophisticated theory of the real. He clarifies some of the dualisms that Bergson used (and which heavily inspired Deleuze) by "resetting" and modifying them (non-exhaustively to real/possible and ideal/actual).

• The virtual is a 'real idealization' such as a memory or dream.
• The concrete is an 'actual real' such as a taken-for-granted thing, our everyday 'now.'
• The abstract is a 'possible ideal' (pure abstraction, concepts).
• The probable is an 'actual possibility' usually expressed mathematically as a percentage.

In this way, the virtual is distinct not only from the concrete, but also from the abstract. The virtual is always real, even if it is a memory.

Of modern virtual environments, Shields writes, "Simulations offer virtual environments - clearly they are 'something,' but there is no materiality there." That lack of materiality is worth looking at (though, I would note that digital virtual environments are mediated in the material - video screens, audio sources, haptic feedback devices). Materiality would require some amount of extent, dimensionality, in the physical world. Virtual spaces are spaces that take up no space. Or, as Lev Manovich pipped in The Language of New Media (and probably adopted from an earlier source):

There is no space in cyberspace (2001 pg. 253).

Technology is used to create a perceived space without physical extents. This is not unlike the geometrical perspective techniques developed by Italian Renaissance artists such as Brunelleschi to present a sense of spatiality to the viewers of their (ostensibly two-dimensional) paintings and other works. Shields, "digitally generated environments are virtual in part because they have no location in the actual world, but rather depend on the ability of the users to imagine virtuality and the artistry of graphic software and computer interfaces."

It is here that Shields is referencing David Rothenberg's Hand's End: Technology and the Limits of Nature:

The world conveyed by the interactive computer has been dubbed 'virtual' because its location or features cannot be pinpointed in the tangible world. It exists within the relation between machine and the user. We cannot place it inside the machine, because it is not there unless we invoke it, and it is not wholly within our minds because we do not possess the hardware necessary to conjure it up (1993 pg. 154).

To Shields, virtual spaces are "both no-place and yet present via the technologies which enable them." These environments "are not spatial per se, but only virtually so, they also have duration but... neither a history nor a future... Inside a virtual space itself there is only the immediacy of the scenario displayed." It is something that always happens "now." They may be archived, but virtual spaces and objects are merely retrieved and recreated in the present moment.

This analysis has steered far from Boellstorff without settling on a definition of "virtual." To be continued...