Sherry Turkle's A Second Life

This section, titled The Empathy Diaries, delves into observations made regarding the human ability to exert empathy in relation to the technological dependency they have developed. The latest generation of children have been constantly raised around technology. Not with technology, but around it. It’s been a bigger part of their lives than one can imagine. Christmas lists that, in previous generations, had been filled out with the wishes of bicycles and board games have been replaced with the wishes of iPhones and laptops for children ages as young as 9. The Empathy Diaries takes a look at what effects this shift has caused in younger generations of Americans. Thanks to the constant presence of technology, younger generations have

Synthetic, pretend, mock, fake, these are all synonyms to the word virtual. “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline shows the positives and negatives to living entirely in a virtual world. Although there are favorable aspects to developing and nurturing online friendships or even relationships there are fallible aspects as well that seem to outnumber what may appear harmless at first. In this book we are shown 3 different sets of online relationships, that of best friends, a couple and “brothers”. Aech and Wade are the first real relationship shown in this book and they model best friends. These two have been best friends for the past 4 years and have spent countless hours together playing video games, watching movies and just talking. Because

Video games were created to provide a unique, interactive experience for the user. This “experience” is something we can define as being fun, engaging, and interesting. This was the mindset of Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; he was extremely engaged and interested in his work regarding the monster. However, MMORPG’s represent the bad side to video games; in the same way that Frankenstein’s monster was the hellish subject that interested him, MMORPG’s still interest some users despite their lack of true video game “experience”. In fact, MMORPG’s cause addiction, separate families, lead to depression, and separate the user from real life, indicating that they are virtual “animals” that need to be tamed.

The rising generation is notorious for absorbing their lives with all things virtual. With the coming forth of new and advanced technology in recent years, the world has seen a shift in the trends and behaviors of the rising generation. In association to these advancements, we have seen improvements in things like medical care and worldwide communications, but we have also observed a sudden disinterest in human interaction as well as obsessive gaming addictions where users waste countless hours online. In a speech given to the students of Brigham Young University-Idaho, David A. Bednar addressed this topic as a means of guidance and direction for these young students. Bednar uses allusion, imagery, and specific word choice that taps into the

Furthermore, emotions that, previously, could only be gained from face-to-face interaction and work ethic, such as accomplishment, can now be obtained through simulations and virtual connectivity. Turkle expands on why that is through her observations of gamers and a very popular video game, the Sims. One of the factors she writes about connects to the previous point that these worlds are instantaneous. With a couple presses of keys or a click of a button, gratifying environments can be programmed rather than putting in the time or effort to experience natural ones in real life. For example, Turkle interviewed two girls on what the Sims means to them and both used the simulation game as a way of creating an environment in which they held all of the power; by just choosing which traits their Sims can have, they can achieve things within the game with a touch of a button (Turkle 437). Alongside the attractiveness of instant progress, dangers and complexity of real world situations are taken out of the equation when one immerses themselves in the virtual world. Margalit also states this idea by writing, “When playing a computer game, for example, we can experience excitement, frustration, and tension, but we can never be injured” (Margalit 2014). Not only does this apply to physical danger, but emotional risks that

In the first reading, “Spectacular Interventions of Second Life,” author Burcu Bakioglu explores the practice of “griefing” in the game Second Life, which he describes as disruptive gameplay in the effort to negative affect the other players’ experiences (Bakioglu,

At the age of eight, all I have put effort on learning was begin competitive. The only one interest that became my addition of mine leads to my brother, who has introduced the Toon Town, an online gaming system, where every toon at different level have the opportunity to fight against the cogs with the amount of supplies they have; thereafter, the ones that survives through the fight earns toons’ laughter points to raise their toon levels up from the range as low as twenty-five to an extend as one-hundred thirty seven. The article by Sarah Adams, Be Cool to the pizza Dude demonstrates the ideal example of interacting with community. On the other hand, MySpace Outage Leaves Millions Friendless is an article by the Onion, online networking news publisher convey the downhill side of having to deal with malfunction of their habitual social networking site. Becoming part of an online gaming community makes us all feel good since an online community meets people’s expectation for accepting who they really are truly defining that virtual community is a real community.

The term “gamer” tends to be synonymous with “geek” in many people’s minds. They see gaming as a device that absorbs the majority of the time of the user, leaving them as mindless empty, pale husks with no ambitions other than beating that next boss or shooting the enemy in the face. However, few gamers waste their life away. On the contrary, many of these so-called geeks tend to be more social than the average person, and farther down the technological curve than most. For the truth is that gaming is a rather useful and beneficial hobby. It gives people an outlet to focus on, and can connect them with many others worldwide. It can teach and entertain at the same time, and can be a useful distraction at other times. In this essay then,

Wright is a famous video game creator and has worked on countless video games. In doing this, he greatly adds to his credibility and this increases his evidence’s credibility as well. He is deeply familiar with how video games can affect people and knows an extensive amount about how they are created and what they are made to influence in people’s minds. Wright also created games such as “Sims,” which are meant to stimulate imagination, creativity, and help create a community. By being a creator of a game like this he shows that video games can be used to create a sense of community, belonging, and encourage the imagination. Rather than being mindless, worthless, and unimportant, Wright shows that video games can be used to help children improve their thinking and

In the article, “Hyperconnected,” Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler discuss the development of identities that are constructed from social networks. They use World of Warcraft to illustrate their main point, which is integrated with logical appeal (Logos) and ethical appeal (Ethos). Certainly, Nicholas and James comprehend that technology has blossom throughout the years, thus leading to the innovation of the printing press, the television, and the Internet, components that we depend on a daily-basis. Here they state that “Within this game, people form friendships, have sustained interactions as groups, communicate using instant messaging, collaborate to achieve shared goals, engage in economic transactions, and fight

In recent years, kids are largest number of virtual worlds users and participation of them in virtual worlds has grown (KZero, 2009). Virtual worlds are captivated children with some sort of characteristics such as immersive, imaginary and collaborative (Tuukkanen, Iqbal & Kankaanranta, 2010). At the same time, citizenship is an important sense that makes people come together and gain fellow feeling that we have for others in our community (O’Loughlin, 2006). Civic engagement in both political and non-political process is necessary for developing knowledge, skills and values to make difference in world. The virtual spaces could be employed for children to express their opinions and in offering

In many disciplines, ethnography serves as a form of understanding a culture through scientific participation. However, in an increasingly technological climate, authors Rosa Martey and Kevin Shiflett analyze how these conventional practices can be used to benefit virtual world research in their study of Second Life. This extension of ethnographic research serves to be fundamental in the communications discipline, since various virtual cultures exist where users, or subjects, spend countless hours in virtual spaces with distinct cultures and communities. This paper will function as a summary analysis for the article “Reconsidering Site and Self: Methodological Frameworks for Virtual-World Research,” identifying the adoption of virtual ethnography as co-beneficial to both the study of ethnography, and the study of online spaces.

On the other hand, online communities like Second Life limit peoples’ abilities of developing their own personalities. By projecting their lives onto avatars, it is hard to differentiate between the real world and the virtual world. Success and failure as well as capabilities and skills that are experienced online are oftentimes lacking in real life, although this is hardly noticed. (Scribner, 2007). It is so much easier to be everyone you want to be in the online world: The shy guy turns into a womanizer and the unemployed pretends to be a wealthy businessman driving a Mercedes. And while more and more time is spent online with the virtual alter ego, Second Life gradually becomes “First Life”. It is a time consuming activity that also need

This genre began with the board game Dungeons and Dragons and moved into online games such as MUD1 in the 1980s (Lastowka and Hunter 17 – 18). There is very little difference to what we know as reality and these virtual “games.” Yet, my curiosity does not lie in the “game” itself or its appearance as a virtual reality, instead I will emphasize the themes that I see prevalent in a MMORPG as they refer to consumerism, specifically Second Life, and compare its dynamic to the “Tupperware-style sex toy party” (an observation Deborah Curtis made in her “Commodities and Sexual Subjectivities: A Look at Capitalism and Its Desires”). Obviously, this appears a strange task, but it is in this juxtaposition that we will be able to identify desires of our society, particularly sex and commodities. Fostered in certain dynamics, both these instances, the sex toy part and the MMORPG, allow individuals to express themselves by means of their desirous self (a term that later withholds a much greater social meaning). We attempt to find satisfaction by means of carnal vehicles. That is to say, much of our consumption, online and physically, can be categorized within these two possibilities. Furthermore, Second Life extends the sex toy party by administering romance and mystery creating a type of utopian commercial arena that says a few more things about Generation Y than just stating the obvious (i.e. we enjoy sitting behind a computer

In the development of our culture starting as far back as some of us can remember, even before video games, children and youth have always been fascinated by violence and games involving role playing fantasy. From childhood with its innocuous games of cowboys and Indians, to cops and robbers, we have always looked to fantasy and make believe to entertain ourselves and at times escape from the reality of a very normal, mundane life. States Harold Schecter PhD, a professor of English at Queens College in New York City “I have little doubt that fifty years from now, parents will be raising a howl over virtual-reality shoot-‘em–ups that allow their kids to actually feel the splatting blood from the blown-off head of a holographic zombie, and that they will pine for the idyllic days of 2004, when children enjoyed such harmlessly cartoonish pastimes as Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto.”