by Robert Muffoletto

The “individualist” emerges as a specific social type who has at least the potential to migrate between a number of available worlds, and who as deliberately and awarely constructed a self out of the “material” provided by a number of available identities.

Berger and Luckmann, p.171

Post-structuralism offers to us a model for considering the relationship of the individual and their socially and constructed worlds. As Berger and Luckmann’s comment above suggests, the individual constructs a sense of “self out of the material provided”. Virtual worlds not only provide the individual material for constructing the lived experience of a constructed world, but the objects through which to construct their own identities. This in part is no difference from what the individual creates from the materials that are thought of as part of the “real” world. It is a world where we only know the object through some perceptual, sense image, experience of it; one we consider to be real and true. In constructing the world in this manner, the individual perceives no difference between the world and her image of it. Virtual worlds then, are one step further towards realism, authenticity and veracity, in an effort to copy what we already know. The essence of a virtual world is that it looks and feels like the world we have taken for granted.

This taken for granted, a common sense of reality, is where the issues lie. The individual (as object and subject) from any perspective, when analyzed, is a construction of relationships formed between the materials of a perceived reality. This is where semiotics and post-structuralism plays a part. Post-structuralism as well as, post-modernism, positions the individual as the author of her experienced world and her self within it. The notion of self is a dialog between the construction of meaning by the individual within the historical and cultural codes of experience. Historical codes refer to the idea of dialectical materialism, the changing nature of material meaning. That is, the meaning of any signifier is dependent upon the reader’s historical context of engagement, where meaning itself, is not fixed but is dynamic and historical. This position is in opposition to modernism and structuralism, where meanings and “truth” are fixed, allowing the reader of the text to only to discover the meanings within and pre-defined.

Entering a (virtual) world is actually entering a matrix of objects and their relationships to each other and the viewer/reader of the text. Visual codes such as space, depth, surface, and time, are constructed in a field relationship to borders and frames for the reader to experience. (Arnheim, 1974) (It will not be discussed here, but the producers of the field are not mere producers, but are produced themselves by the historical cultural framework they have experienced.) The reader of the “virtual” text, is making sense or meaning of their experience not as ahistorical objects, but as an historical subject, formed by the taken-for-granted world she believes she lives in.

Like a good fiction, the author is to construct enough of the story to appear to be more than possible, but to be plausible, while engaging the reader with material that constructs its own truth. Science fiction may seem possible and even plausible to the reader, but is unreal and fantastic. In this sense the text invites the willing reader to form an identity relative to the story being told. As readers of the text, we are continually inventing our own identity, our own consciousness, relative to the story being read.

As McLuhan has suggested, the development of reach and communication has extended the individual causing them to be different than they were before. The medium of electricity, the destruction of time and space, has changed and has redefined who we think we are and where we think we are. (McLuhan and Powers, 1989) Digital, networked media has not only changed how the world is, but has changed the individual’s concept of self in the world. As McLuhan may suggest, as a result of being everywhere at any time, we are nowhere all the time. This shift in perception, in consciousness, has re-mediated the sense of self in a constructed model of a world where borders and time have shifted, where the virtual has become “more” real, where the simulation has replaced the object. It is a sense-world where the reproduction of the real has lost a sense of the unique. (Benjamin, 1968)

The virtual world attempts to simulate the world as “we” have come to know it. This simulation goes beyond the re-mediation of objects as sense material, to the drawing upon cultural codes and metaphors to give meaning to the material depicted. Meaning in a “virtual world”, as in a false sense of a “real” world, is a social construction. Metaphors are historically and culturally grounded. Virtual worlds that draw upon metaphors for interacting with the individual not only strive to produce a sense of place and time, but provide the reader, the voyager, with the material to borrow a given identity.

To construct a space that signifies a school, a western town, or a mountain village, draws upon metaphors for the reader to live within. Readers as individuals, individuals as members of a crowd, are not innocent or naive. They are not travelers without histories or language through which to create their world. Voyeurs bring with them ways of thinking and habits of mind that are grounded in historical social communities. How travelers read and understand the metaphors used to create “worlds” will determine their experience. A challenge to designers and developers of global environments (Internet disseminated worlds exists within a global environment.) is to understand and be sensitive to the voyager or reader’s cultural, social, and economic background. Selecting an empty metaphor, one that is not a metaphor but the object depicted, will create confusion when the reader understands this object in relationship to others: other meaning may be created.

At stake here is the notion of the individual and one’s identity in a virtual world, one’s avatar. The individual as viewed through the lens of western culture constructs the individual as a free agent, an objectified object, ahistorical, fixed, and responsible for her own life. When individuals attempt to change their identity, as in trans-sexual, or simply name changes, or resists identity change, as in taking a spouses last name at marriage, is brought into question. Children are many times are asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” or adults when acting out another identity are asked, “What are you trying to be?” Many times the question is not about “who”, but “what”. The “what” is what identity is.

An avatar, a virtual representation of you, allows you to acquire an identity, to play out being the other. One web site author expressed it this way, “Imagination left unchecked or unbalanced between fantasy and real life is sure to leave people stranded in limbo, gamer or not. Your on-line identity is the anchor of your imagination; therefore it is something that centers your virtual life and either grounds it with the real world or lets it fly untamed.” (http://www.olganon.org/Gamer/Ideas_to_Help/Identity/identity.html) The author differentiates between real and fantasy worlds, and the identity the individual selects to use. In the real world your identity is fixed, in the virtual world you are free to invent.

In virtual worlds the voyager works in concert with the program developer and the borders set by the developer as to the identity one may consume or borrow. In the end the avatar, the identity one seeks belongs to the program, the developer behind the program, and the owner of the territory. In this way, virtual worlds are not much different from “real” worlds where the dominant power structure defines and limits the identities of its social order. In simple terms there are social and economic categories, there are gender roles assigned to biological differences (gender is a social construct), and there are labor identities where some are valued and reap benefits and others do not. In a very simple manner, the dominate social and economic forces which create, manage, and distribute common sense reality, define what is “real” and what is not, and what is real and what is fantasy. As an avatar you can act as you wish, receive punishment from the headmaster if you miss behave, and as an extreme, be eliminated from the world. Virtual worlds are not that different from what we have been told is the real world. Within those constructs the identity of individuals may be molded by the metaphors and the language used to construct the world, in short programmed.

Education

Educational opportunities emerge in virtual worlds as learning environments over teaching environments (In changing the orientation of the environment the notions of teacher and learner also change.). The impact and effect of these opportunities is guided by the philosophical understanding of the purpose of education, learning theories, which guide practice and definitions of learning. Historically, in the United States public education by the end of the nineteenth century, began to serve a different master. Education was given the responsibility to educate and socialize the newly arrived immigrant groups into the established social and economic order. As the urban industrial centers grew, so did the massive urban education complex. In many venues education served the needs of business through curriculums and learning environments that were authority centered, provided a worldview through the curriculum that reinforced social and economic class differences as normal, and offered a replacement of apprenticeship with a training model. From this perspective children were offered an education, which prepared them for “life” and the world of labor.

Media and emerging technologies took the form of “audio visual aids”, providing assistance to the teacher in presenting curricular materials. Audiovisual materials also claimed to do more than just aid the teacher; it presented the world, life, as it really is. Photographs, and later films, brought the world to the classroom (this claim would be made by television as well), or so it was believed. The representational nature of the image, both visual and sound, was rarely questioned. The image was an extension of the textbook, inviting the learner to learn about the world. In this same period curriculum development acquired a scientific foundation. Scientifically developed systems were used to develop standardized curriculums to meet the needs of the social order. The individuals were tested to determine intelligence, as well as one’s aptitude towards different futures (careers replaced the term work). It was in these historical moments (1940s-1950s) when the emergence of the field of educational (instructional) technology as a systems approach to defining educational needs and solutions emerged. The field was the merger of engineering principals and devices, a learning psychology (neo-behaviorism), and the perceived needs of society for an educated population. The field of educational technology would later bring us (1960s to the present) educational television, early versions of teaching machines (BF Skinner), programmed instruction, instructional kits and packages, computer based delivery and management of learners and instruction, and integrated learning technologies (systems). What each of these “technologies” had in common was a controlled representation or remediation (delivery) of the world, the placement of the individual as primary over the concept of the community, and an expanding structure of control over what teachers did in classrooms – their behavior and the knowledge they disseminated to their students. The recent “No Child Left Behind Act” and efforts to place computers in the hands of every student best exemplify these efforts in the United States.

Throughout the twentieth century the concept of the individual countered one based upon community. The individual’s identity and self worth was not centered in community life but in their accomplishments and actions as an individual. The new digital computer based systems or technologies (Technology is understood as the blending of hardware, software, and theory of use), because of their network capabilities, has the potential to challenge the notion of the individual as a single ahistorical autonomous being, unrelated to others and geography. As a member of a (learning) community, the identity of the individual shifts from an “I” to a ”WE” perspective. Communities are not competitive but are cooperative. Individuals in this context exist within a collective, historical notion of knowledge of self, where history situates the individual within a flow of time and events. In communities, each individual is connected to each other through time, space, and interdependence. An individual is not by themselves but part of the others. When they think of “self”, it is within the flow of time, not as an unrelated fragment of the whole, but as a moment within an historical consciousness.

Conclusion

The new digitally networked media has the potential to move in various directions concerning education and learning environments. The new media could be used to reproduce the current liberal notion of the individual, or to reconstruct the notion of community. The first is centered on “instructional environments” where knowledge is fixed and something to be learned and owned (the focus is on instruction over learning), and the second on “learners and learning communities, where knowledge is not fixed, historical, dynamic, and lacks ownership. (Flew, 2002)

Virtual world environments offer possibilities to experience and learn in different ways. How these environments are constructed and placed in practice is dependent upon philosophical orientation and ideological borders. Ideological frameworks work to define legitimated practices of thought and action. If the ideological orientation supports a particular paradigm others will be marginalized. If the paradigm is normalized it becomes an instrument to define and limit consciousness and “truth”. When conflicting paradigms meet, we find points of struggle over the identity of the individual and eventually the community.

The choice then for designers of developers of virtual worlds is no different from those of the “perceived real world”. What are the paradigms defining truth and the individual within it? Learning environments, buy its very name, refers to learning over instructional. If virtual worlds are to become learning environments over shopping malls, what will be the philosophical and ideological foundations which not only construct its veracity, but the identity of those who enter it. On one hand we are born into a virtual world of language, culture, and power relationships, thinking it is all normal and correct until we “bump up” against another construction (world).

Will the developers at all levels of virtual worlds create conditions for us to bump into ourselves?

References

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968)

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The social construction of Reality: A treatise in the Socology of Knowledge (New york: Anchor books, 1966)

Terry Flew, New Media: an introduction (New york: Oxford University Press, 2002

Marshall McLuhan and Bruce Powers, The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)

Rudolf Arnheim, Art and visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954)