|
Reality and Fantasy
in Online Groups
An Investigation into Life in the
Screen
Rationality vs. Fantasy:
The internet is a new frontier – a new communication
medium, which has provided and continues to offer a space
where people can meet, exchange ideas, collaborate or argue,
form communities, chat, engage in virtual sex, promote their
goods and services for sale, conduct commerce and more.
The Internet has transformed the computer from a single-user
technological tool into a tool for exchanging information
with a vast group of others, in a world-wide communications
space.
I want to address issues of reality and fantasy as they apply
to this space called the internet. We can begin with the obvious
questions:
What is reality?
And
What is fantasy?
Well, we all know what reality is. Or, we think we do. We
refer to the concept implicitly and explicitly from time to
time. Psychoanalysts talk of reality, of being in touch with
reality, or out of touch, as if one could touch it, as if
there’s an it there to touch – as if the concept
were readily accessible to consciousness. We could go into
an extensive review of philosophical thought concerning reality,
as various philosophers, from Plato through Descartes, and
on, have addressed the issue through the centuries. Take Descartes
for example. He sits in his chair, and wonders whether everything
he sees before him – the wall, the painting, the fireplace,
even the chair on which he’s sitting, and even he himself
are real. Perhaps it’s all in his imagination, he muses.
Descartes wants to doubt everything, hold everything up to
question, to find out what happens. In his Meditations, he
then goes on to conclude that reality exists, and it’s
a product of the mind, of reason. Descartes thus opens up
the age of rationality, the era of Enlightenment thinking
which holds reason to be supreme, and so Descartes is now
known as the father of the modern age of philosophy. This
approach can be opposed to the postmodern, of which I’ll
say more later.
Psychoanalytically, we can say that someone who is out of
touch with reality, and is unaware they are out of touch,
is psychotic. Someone who is only somewhat out of touch with
everyday reality from time to time, is considered neurotic.
Freud doesn’t really attempt to define reality is. However,
we know something of his reality – how he was unable
to take up work as a professor in Vienna because he was Jewish,
for example. We also know from some of his writings about
society, such as The Future of an Illusion (1927), that he
feels that society as a whole is suffering under a variety
of fantasies and delusions, some of which he believes could
lead to disastrous consequences. He discusses these premonitions
with Einstein, who at that point is much more optimistic.
Freud’s apparent pessimism about the course western
culture was on at that point was proven to be visionary. Nazism
was flourishing in Germany 10 years later, and Freud was lucky
to escape with his life from his native Vienna. Essentially,
we see that Freud believes all society is neurotic at best,
and so what would it mean to adjust yourself to that reality?
To quote Freud:
“… no doubt fate would find it easier than I do
to relieve you of your illness. But you will be able to convince
yourself that much will be gained if we succeed in transforming
your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental
life that has been restored to health you will be better armed
against that unhappiness”. [Freud, S., Studies on Hysteria,
SE Vol. 2, p305]
Many psychoanalysts since that time show that, in some way
or other, they share Freud’s skepticism about the society’s
mental well-being. Some, like Laing (in Politics of Experience)
take a radical path in suggesting that perhaps even those
who are considered mad may in fact be the sane ones, and vice
versa. Laing’s notion forced many to reconsider their
assumptions about normality, everyday life and madness.
Lacan draws distinctions between the imaginary, the symbolic
and the real, but as we read through Lacan we find that it
is only the symbolic and the imaginary which can be accessed
and comprehended by the mind – reality is somehow there
yet our experience and understanding of it is always mediated
through language – through words which are signifiers
pointing to the signified, Like the word “tree”
refers to the object we know as a tree, yet the referent,
that which the signified represents, that which is real –
the tree in itself – is not accessible through language
.
So we see that reality is not simple concept, and it is not
necessarily readily accessible to our minds. So let’s
now consider fantasy. Fantasy on the ‘net. Consider
the historical evolution of the Internet for a moment.
Historical View of Fantasy Games on computers and the ‘Net:
I first encountered the internet in the early 80s, when I
was a graduate student in computer science. First designed
as a redundant system by the military to allow continual uninterrupted
operation of critical military command systems even in the
event of a nuclear strike against the U.S., it was initially
opened up to the universities to allow a collaborative experimental
and learning community to work together in improving, refining
and expanding its orbits. In those days, the communal unstructured
aspect of the 'net consisted only of Usenet – a bulletin
board where discussions could take place on matters both serious
and banal. Usenet offered sections for discussion of all sorts
of subjects – everything from abstruse technical matters,
to social conversations, philosophy and commerce – everything
from abortion to zebras.
One popular fantasy game available on the mainframe prior
to the internet was called Adventure. You had to type in your
commands: “Go down rabbit hole”. “Say ‘open
sesame’”, and you’d advance on a quest to
find some imaginary prize. While this game was popular among
computer science students, what was even more popular among
the graduate students – who worked with the Unix operating
system – was a game called Rogue. The player, represented
by an “X” on the screen, travels around various
rooms and passageways, drawn using the regular ASCII keyboard
characters, and from time to time encounters monsters, who
must be vanquished before they kill him. Each blow against
a monster saps his strength points somewhat, while a kill
increases them. As the player progress, he develops more strength
points, enabling him to battle more ferocious monsters. While
travelling through the rooms of this virtual world, the player
can also pick up magic scrolls, stashes of gold, magic potions,
etc. He can find a trapdoor on each level which takes the
player to the next level below (considered, actually, as a
“higher” level), where different and more formidable
monsters lurk, and more valuable treasure awaits. The ultimate
aim is to attain the ultimate object—that imaginary
prize which will gratify all desire .
One could spend many hours playing this game, learning new
tricks each time, such as how to battle different types of
monsters, and what armor and weapons work best in various
circumstances. It is not surprising that people would want
to escape to some sort of fantasy via the computer, this machine
that was unforgivingly rational and certain in its consistently
rigid behavior. The perfectly rational versus the utterly
fanciful. The space opened up to the computer user was populated
by processes and programs which could sometimes be infected
by bugs – anthropomorphic constructions of programmatic
systems running as subsystems of programmed (operating) systems
which functioned in an unexpected manner. A world (a space)
infested/infected with fantasy objects !
People could sit for hours in front of a terminal screen,
completing a programming project, writing pieces on the text
editor, visiting Usenet, or e-mailing the few others in the
world who had e-mail. Or you could also escape into the exciting
fantasy world of Rogue. Everyone knew it was a fantasy game,
yet students would often spend considerable amounts of time
discussing Rogue strategies, and recounting the dramas that
had unfolded during their last quest, just before they were
killed by a Troll or some other fiend. One evening, I saw
Bert, a fellow graduate student – wandering down the
bleak corridors of the computer lab, looking exceptionally
downhearted. “What’s the matter?” I asked
him. “Aww, Jeez .. I got killed by a Zonk on level 15,
and it took me over two hours to get there.” “Oh,
that’s awful,” I commiserated with him. “Yeah,
and that was the highest level I’d ever gotten to,”
he sighed. The elements of fantasy had taken priority over
the bleak, gray rationality of the computer laboratory.
MUDS (Multi-User Domains) and MOOs (MUDS of the Object
Oriented Type):
As the internet became more pervasive, MUDs became popular.
The word “MUD” stands for “Multi User Domain”
while “MOO” stands for “Multi User Domain
of the Object Oriented sort.” An adventure-type MUD
is a Multi User Domain – a game where players adopt
various fantasy identities, and go on a quest, generally for
adventure and treasure. It’s like a multi-user version
of Rogue. However, in most MUDs there is not a stated final
goal – the aim, if any is simply to keep the community
alive and functioning, so all can participate in it and enjoy
the community that evolves. It is played widely by university
students, and allows players to explore various aspects of
themselves – aspects which they could not normally present
in their normal public lives. In an adventure-type MUD, a
player can be a sorcerer, an elf, a magician, a rogue, or
whatever strikes his or her fancy. These MUDs are centered
around a metaphor of physical space, often an ancient or mediaeval
space .
In each room or space in which you find yourself, you are
told what interesting objects exist and what other characters
are in the room. You can generally pick up or examine objects
to learn more about them, and you can also communicate with
other characters. In general, you are expected to stay in
role when communicating, though some MUDs allow players to
communicate with one another out of their role in special
OOC (Out of Character) asides.
Before playing each player writes a brief piece describing
his character, and this description is available to other
players to view at any time. Players form impressions of one
another through reading each other’s self-descriptions
and through interacting with them throughout the game play.
In social MUDs, players interact with one another as members
of a village, town or community. Players again may invent
any identity they choose, but depending on the nature and
rules of the particular MUD, what is allowed or forbidden
is governed by a variety of rules. Many such communities have
a wide variety of characters, who interact just like citizens
of a town would. There are houses, roads, a town square, a
city hall, a mayor and a variety of bureaucrats, performing
routine functions, like collecting taxes and registering deeds
for real estate. There is generally also some type of law
enforcement authority – in the form often of Wizards
and Grand Wizards, who have the power to eject people if necessary.
Some MUDs also have counselors, advisors and therapists. All
of this takes place in the virtual world of the Social MUD,
and players communicate with one another and receive instructions
via written text.
A particular style of writing and communication develops
in these communities, where participants may alter normal
rules of English somewhat – for example, typing “How
r u?” or using common abbreviations such as “IMHO”
(In my humble opinion), as well as various emoticons such
as :) or :( to indicate happiness and sadness. As there are
no facial expressions or body language to read, one must judge
other players’ sincerity through other means. If you
want to express irony, you have to work on it in a different
way than you would irl (in real life). In irl, when people
are f2f , there are various meta-communications at play at
the same time there are communications taking place on the
verbal level. Although we are not always consciously aware
of these communications, various researchers, including Gregory
Bateson, Laing and Birdwhistell have shown that they play
an important part in communication between us, and from time
to time create anxiety, confusion or even madness. Communication
taking place in web space occurs within a narrower bandwidth,
meaning we must work harder to convey the flavor of what we
mean. Also, some researchers have found that the narrower
bandwidth lends itself well to the creation of a realm of
fantasy which can be desirable – for example, in sex-chat
rooms.
There are many studies available concerning the social life
of MUDs, examining such things as whether a “true”
community exists in this online world; the nature of presence
; whether presence is achieved; how relationships form and
dissolve; the nature and dynamics of transvestitism; love
and sex; etc. The fact that such studies exist seems to point
to the fact that these online groups do indeed constitute
a discrete community each with its own rules and social mores.
Because some characters in the town are pretty well-defined
in their function – such as certain city hall clerks
– they are played by programmatic characters, generally
referred to as “bots” . Players and cyberculture
creators with some basic programming skills have created a
diverse array of bots, which are set loose in these communities,
and on the wider Internet space, to play one role or other.
In one community, there was a Barney bot, which kept telling
everyone he met how happy he was, and how pleased he was to
see them. Though Barney was soon murdered by one of the other
players, this Barney-bot was quickly resurrected. Soon, however,
Barney was “offed” again. Eventually, someone
decided that it wasn’t OK to kill Barney. If you killed
him in future, then two identical Barneys would take his place.
If you them tried to kill these Barneys then their number
would double, causing even more distress to those players
who found the character insufferable.
Not surprisingly, many players spend time in the game getting
to know other players, in role. If you get to know someone
really well, you may want to venture to get to know them out
of role. So, on-line “virtual” romance leads to
romance irl .
The boundaries between what can be called reality and what
a game are blurred. The following statement is from a set
of FAQs, written by Jennifer Smith (see the newsgroup rec.games.mud.misc).
Question 13 reads:
Is MUDding a game, or an extension of real life with gamelike
qualities? It’s up to you. Some jaded cynics like to
laugh at idealists who think it’s partially for real,
but we personally think they’re not playing it right.
Certainly the hack-‘n-slash stuff is only a game, but
the social aspects may well be less so .
The Turing test:
In 1951, a computer scientist named Alan Turing wrote a
paper which explored the question, “Can a Machine Think?”
Turing first explains a game which involves fantasy of a sort
and was popular at certain parties in Cambridge at the time.
Two people, a male and a female, would be assigned to a room,
and the door closed. Suppose we call the two people A and
B. Then there is a third person (C) who has to guess which
of A and B is male and which female. The only way C can communicate
with the people in the room is via typewritten notes. A and
B also communicate via typewritten notes which are slid under
the door. One player is supposed to help the questioner, while
the other’s role is to confuse the questioner as much
as possible. The possibilities for this game are fascinating.
What questions would you ask to try to determine who is male
and who is female? But that issue is the subject of an entirely
different paper.
Turing goes on to ask what would happen if, instead of putting
a male and a female in the room, you were to place a person
and a computer there. Would the questioner be able to tell
the difference, if the computer tried to fool the researcher?
In his paper, Turing suggested that, in 50 years time, there
would be computers that would be smart enough to fool the
questioner for at least five minutes. This theory is what
inspired the homicidal computer, HAL, in 2001: A Space Odyssey,
a movie which got its title from the Turing paper. Fifty years
after 1951 is 2001.
This test of a computer’s ability to fool a person
is known as the Turing Test and various people have offered
substantial monetary rewards to anyone who can create a computer
system that can pass it. A group of people at Pittsburgh University
created a bot called Julia which “lives” in one
of the online MUDs. She flirts with men, and knows a lot abut
hockey. There are many cases of men being fooled by Julia
for a while. This occurs in a MUD where players are familiar
with the concept of bots. What are the fantasies of those
who encounter Julia, and what is it about her responses that
alert the player to the fact that she’s just a program?
The nature of sexual desire and the fantasies associated with
it are brought into question here. Clearly, even in virtual
space, desire needs a gratification and has a sensitivity
that’s associated with the body and its responses and
which alerts the player when the cues he receives don’t
work appropriately somehow .
Eliza:
Another notable fantasy construct is the ELIZA program.
In the early 1960s, Joseph Weizenbaum, the famous Artificial
Intelligence (AI) researcher at MIT, developed his Eliza program
(named after the character in Pygmalion ), which showed how
the computer could be used for text manipulation, as well
as number crunching (which is all that computers were seen
as good for in those days). Eliza would take sentences that
a user typed, analyze them and then transform them in some
way, making it appear to have the simple intelligence of a
not-very-imaginative Rogerian therapist. So, for example,
I might write:
Hi, my name is Murray
Eliza might respond:
Hello, Murray. How are you today?”
And the conversation might proceed:
“Well, OK, but these exams are not going well.”
“The exams are not going well?”
“No, and I called my girlfriend and she’s not
there.”
“So, you’re feeling pretty negative today, Murray.”
(Eliza would come out with a statement about being negative
after it encountered 3 or 4 “not’s” close
together.)
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“You guess what?”
“I guess I’m feeling pretty depressed.”
“Does that have anything to do with your mother?”
(Eliza would respond to certain constructions it couldn’t
parse, with stock phrases such as the one about your mother.)
So, who would believe that any intelligent person could reasonably
be led into a world where fantasy and reality become indistinguishable
by such a program running on an IBM mainframe, with text displayed
on one of those green-on-gray IBM terminals?
Well, Weizenbaum was so surprised to find people earnestly
relating to this simplistic program – this virtual simplistic
therapist – that he wrote a book decrying the tendency
to think that anything useful, anything therapeutic, could
come out of this type of program? Not only did Weizenbaum’s
secretary fall for Eliza, but notable figures in the world
of AI at MIT such as Herbert Simon began singing the praises
of Eliza and the possibilities the program opened up—people
would no longer have to pay for expensive psychoanalysis.
They could simply be plonked in front of a terminal with a
souped-up version of Eliza running, and receive the best therapy
rationality could concoct! Cheap. Effective. Therapy for the
masses. What could be better? Soma for the masses?
The reality is that people allow their fantasies to determine
what they find in the “space” opened up “in
the screen” or “on” the screen. When John
Lilly was asked by the Air Force to investigate mysterious
crashes of jets in the early fifties, he discovered that the
environment in which these pilots flew lacked sensory stimulation,
and in these conditions, after some time, the mind began manufacturing
its own content – fantasies, dreams and content –
fantasies, dreams and hallucinations. Perhaps we can understand
the virtual space opened up in the computer screen in a similar
manner.
So what is real in virtual space?
Considering the fuzzy boundaries that exist in the world
of interaction via the use of computers, we begin to see that
the boundaries between reality and fantasy are in no way clearly
definable. But then this is something that everyone who uses
the ‘net already knows to some extent. Every computer
user must take account of viruses and Spyware when surfing
the ‘net. Nowadays, we must all exercise caution in
terms of what e-mails we open, what sites we visit, what files
we download, what lists we sign up for, etc. We must beware
of phreaks and phonies of all sorts. Identity theft is not
a fantasy, it happens in reality.
Concerning MUDs: I interviewed a player, Graham, from a social
MUD called Ultima Online , who began playing the game while
he was a college student in Australia. He soon became so good
at it that the game controllers in the U.S. asked him to be
a counselor. He was soon getting paid real money for his work
assisting other players with their problems and helping to
keep a reasonable sense of order in the game space. What I
find remarkable is that Graham had purchased property in the
game space soon after he began playing, using play (fantasy)
money. A few years later, the game had become so popular and
land had become so scarce that Graham sold the land to another
player for real cash on eBay. Pure fantasy became real enough
that actual money was exchanged, and cash – what economists
refer to as the store of value, or the medium of exchange
– signifies real value.
So we see here that what is originally considered fantasy,
may at some point and by some people become real and valuable!
Other examples of Fantasy and Reality in the Online World:
I could provide countless other examples of how the boundary
between fantasy and reality becomes blurred in the online
world experience. In some ways this is just as it is in real
life – we are not always able to so easily discern what
is real and what is fantasy. This fact can apply to our perceptions
of other people, to our awareness of social and political
reality, to the economics and production of desire, whether
they be sexual desires, desires for material goods or desires
concerning one’s dreams and ambitions for who or what
one takes oneself to be – one’s role definition.
If reality is ultimately a social construct then we can see
that the answers to these questions of reality and fantasy,
and indeed the list of questions themselves, are founding
moments of our conception of reality.
Then there is the question of what is real and what fantastic
in relation to group experiences. Surely, what Bion describes
as the basic assumption group is a group that has so allowed
itself to become waylaid by a fantasy that it has become a
dependency group, a fight/flight group, or a pairing group,
rather than the group getting on with the work it has set
out to undertake. Clearly, for the basic assumption group,
there exists a fantasy which prevents the group from working.
In reality mode, the group allows itself to be task-oriented,
without necessarily having any fantasy about its composition
at all.
The Lived Body:
In phenomenology, we talk of lived experience, which is
my experience in my body, an experience I have as an embodied
being. This characterizes phenomenological thinking from Husserl
through Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau Ponty and Laing, amongst
others. Psychoanalysis also takes the embodied human being
for its subject. We never talk of a being, nor a philosophy
of psychoanalysis, without reference to the lived body. And
when we talk of intra-personal experience, we are referring
to the experiences of two or more embodied beings. Which brings
us to the question of the relationship of internet space to
the “space” defined by this conference, which
concerns itself with the experiences of group members amongst
themselves, and what is new in the thinking and practice related
to organizational work from the psychoanalytic perspective.
For Bion, it seems that he wavers at times on the point of
whether the group as it exists, as it is experienced by its
members, is an embodied group, or whether it exists as a group
in some wider meta-space. In Experiences in Groups, Bion says:
McDougall and Le Bon seem to speak as if group psychology
comes into being only when a number of people are collected
together ion one place at one time, and Freud does not disavow
this. For my part this is not necessary except to make study
possible: the aggregation of individuals is only necessary
in the way that it is necessary for analyst and analyzed to
come together for the transference relationship to be demonstrable.
Only by coming together are adequate conditions provided for
the demonstration of the characteristics of the group; only
if individuals come sufficiently close to each other is it
possible to give an interpretation without shouting it; equally,
it is necessary for all members of the group to be able witness
the evidence on which the interpretations are based. For these
reasons, the numbers of the group, and the degree of dispersion,
must be limited. The congregation of the group in a particular
place at a particular time is, for these mechanical reasons,
important, but it has no significance for the production of
group phenomena; the idea that it has springs from impression
that a thing must commence at the moment when its existence
becomes demonstrable.
And as Bion continues, he could be talking about lurkers:
In fact, no individual, however isolated in time and space,
should be regarded as outside a group or lacking in active
manifestations of group psychology.” [Bion, W.R., Experiences
in Groups, p 169]
I suggest that this notion of the lived body, the notion
that all I experience I experience as an embodied being, is
crucial to understanding the space opened up by virtual shared
internet space, just as we need to understand the lived body
in relation to everyday experience.
I have found, in interviews and in surveys I have conducted
concerning online experience, that there is a recurrent theme
which spontaneously arises concerning the body and mind when
people begin reflecting on their experiences in the online
world. In the everyday world, we can see each other, and make
judgements and evaluations of others, consciously or unconsciously,
based on their physical appearance: What sex are they? What
clothes are worn? Neat or messy? Young or old? Fat or thin?
Handicapped or physically A-1? Black, white or other race?
Am I attracted to her or him? Do I appear attractive to him
or her? But online these usual evaluations and judgments are
turned on their head. One young woman tells me that what she
really likes about internet chat rooms Is that “online,
you can be whomever you want to be.” Another person,
answering a survey which asks about what they like about the
online world, quotes a New Yorker cartoon, where one dog tells
another that in the online world,:
“The thing I like about the internet is that online,
no one knows you’re a dog.”
I have found this same theme repeated in interviews, in casual
conversations, and in research done on the online world.
The ways in which expereince online is interpreted in terms
of our five senses has been aptly demionstrated to me in my
work with groups in online videconferences and a variety of
online discussion groups. Also, Paulette Robinson shows how
students refelct upon their expereincs in distance learning
contexts in terms of what they see other people saying, How
they watch and are watched, and so on. Also, how people sound
– their tone – is it conversational or are they
shouting? What is the meaning of silence of other members?
How does one listen to others? Does each member have a voice?
Do I hear you? Am I heard?
Online Groups: Practical Examples and Analysis:
Examples from online groups I have been involved with seem
to show that there is more of a propensity for people to behave
aggressively towards one another online than irl.
A few respondents to the survey mentioned that what they
don’t like about online groups is the fighting that
goes on. Some say it bores them, while others say that it
scares them, makes them not want to contribute to the discussion.
One thing that is radically different between the group online
and the group irl, is the experience of the group to those
who don’t participate. In a real-life group I can see
everyone who’s involved in the group, and form impressions
about them based on what they say, and – significantly
– on their silence – what they don’t say.
In an online group, the silent ones –referred to as
lurkers – cannot be seen or heard, and so cannot exert
the same type of influence on the group as silent members
of a flesh-and-blood group might.
I have already referred to the freedom that online communication
offers people. But the other side of the coin is that online
groups also provide the freedom for some group members to
attack others in ways they would not do in a face-to-face
meeting. I heard this observation made by several people who
I interviewed .
Perhaps it’s the fact that in an asynchronous online
group a member can write pieces as long as s/he wants that
also opens up the possibility that members get the impression
that they can fully express themselves without interruption,
which is frequently not possible in face-to-face groups, where
group members may not have the patience to listen to a long
essay about what Jack or Jill thinks about a given subject.
How to Create a Better Online Group:
I have briefly touched on a number of aspects of life online,
or perhaps more accurately, “Life in the screen.”
In the online world, on web pages, one is able to branch off
in a myriad of different directions through the existence
of hypertext, so that one reader can choose to explore through
a particular path, then return and branch off again somewhere
else, while another reader may take a wholly different path,
after starting at the same point.
Another observation I have made in this respect is that conversation
online takes a different form from conversations irl. There
are different explanations for this. First (as pointed out
by Pavel, the inventor of LamdaMOO in his article xxx) typing
text message takes some time, so conversation is not smooth
and immediate. One “says” something and then must
wait while the other types a response. So, what happens in
many synchronous groups (such as MUDs and chat rooms) is that
while there is a pause, someone else will say something unrelated
to the first utterances, and the player/chatter might begin
responding to the second communication, while still retaining
the awareness of the first response she is awaiting. What
occurs then is a multithreaded multi-tasked conversation between
many people, which can be disconcerting to new players/chatters
who are not used to this.
Sherry Turkle stresses again and again that the online world
brings us a completely new metaphor for reality – a
postmodern one. In Turkle’s view, the postmodern is
characterized by a multi-dimensional concept, multiple views
of realty, where no one view can necessarily be said to be
final or complete. In fact, it is not really correct to say
there are multiple views of reality, because that would assume
that there is a reality which exists, of which we can form
multiple views. For the radical postmodern perspective, there
is not necessarily one reality at all, there are simply multiple
perspectives.
When someone who is accustomed to this world of multiple
simultaneous conversations engages in text-based conversation
in an online group, then they would feel comfortable talking
about and responding to more than one thread at a time. If
they, in addition, have learned a sufficiently appropriate
web etiquette (netiquette), then they would also be able to
respond reasonably politely to others’ views, beliefs
and opinions. Sometimes a clash occurs between those who feel
a particular online group is weighty and serious, and participants
should engage in serious conversation concerning a specific
subject matter, pursuing each theme relentlessly until “the
truth” is discovered. An approach such as this seems
to lead inevitably to serious arguments of the head-to-head
variety. [Or avatar-to-avatar? Persona-to-persona? Do we have
“heads” on-line?]
In my view, the phenomenological perspective, as developed
by Husserl, and elaborated upon by Heidegger, Merleau Ponty,
Sartre and – not least of all—by Levinas, provides
a better foundation for the development of knowledge in philosophy,
psychology, science and psychoanalysis. Phenomenology begins
with the understanding that we each have our own perspectives
on the world, so let’s accept that as the reality and
begin from there. There very well may be no final answer,
no one truth, no totalization of the whole ball of wax . This
would accord with Levinas’ view. Levinas might find
it acceptable to attempt to totalize a physical object such
as a ball of wax. But certainly it is not appropriate –
if indeed possible at all –- to attempt to totalize
another human being. It is difficult (or perhaps impossible?)
to live life in the Levinasian spirit, always honoring the
other, always putting the other first, never totalizing him/her,
but always being open to the awareness of the other as an
infinitely unknowable human other (God springs to mind here
). If one keeps this in mind when interacting with others
in online groups, a rich, multitasking multi-threaded conversation
can ensue where there is sufficient room for discussion of
different or multiple views, and divergence of views from
the accepted gospel, while at the same time there is not a
degeneration into a certain stereotyped version of what may
be considered a post-modern mishmash of anything-goes narcissistic
posturing.
Ina recent group I hosted, titled “Value of Values,”
I observed the interaction of one member who was known to
me from previous groups with which I’d been involved
with their members. One such group was set up to study various
case presentations of interactions with groups, and was attended
by a number of professionals. The group had been initiated
by an individual who was attempting to establish himself and
his company as a reputable firm that consulted with organizations,
both on-line and off. As the facilitator for such groups,
I generally try to mediate conversations between members,
but also from time to time express views of my own, which
I feel might be helpful in generating more discussion, including
a reasonable amount of disagreement. Nothing is more boring
than a conversation/discussion where everyone agrees. In one
such group, this individual, who I will call Fred, responded
to a posting I made where I spoke of Nietzsche’s views
concerning values, and the need to re-examine all values,
with the following posting:]
“Murray, be careful. Nietzsche was a fucker!”
I was surprised at first by this, but then welcomed it as
something that showed and expressed some emotional quality,
something that I feel helps an online group stay alive. I
responded to the posting and hoped others would too. However,
the initiator of the group (Alan) was extremely upset by this,
and felt that Fred was deliberately using Anglo-Saxonisms
in "his" group to show disrespect. He felt such
language (such behavior) should not be allowed, and so diverted
the flow of the conversation to the issue of whether it was
permissible to use such language. I, personally, was not particularly
affronted by the language. What was more important to me was
the fact (as I saw it) that Fred had completely misconstrued
Nietzsche. However, Alan had ultimate authority, and he insisted
on carrying on the complaint to the point of toading Fred.
I personally felt that Alan overstepped his authority in usurping
my authority as group facilitator to wrestle with and threaten
Fred publicly in the group, and that as professionals with
psychoanalytic backgrounds, these people were not children
and were perfectly capable of dealing with such language.
Fred then attended my “Value of Values” group,
and began creating waves in the somewhat placid waters of
the group up to that time, by talking about how sorry he felt
for a group of young Republicans at a university in the Midwest
who wanted to conduct a bake sale, which was perceived by
the authorities at the university as racist. Some feminists
had held a bake sale at the university a few months before
where they charged higher prices for cookies to men than to
women to try to illustrate the inequality in wages that exists
in the society. These Young Republicans organized a bake sale
where they posted menus showing lower prices for minorities,
to illustrate their point that they felt that minorities were
being given an unfair advantage because of affirmative action
policies that were in existence at the university.
Initially, I though that this would lead to serious fights
and arguments in the group. However, two group members, both
steeped in Levinas, engaged Fred in conversation, and finally
showed respect for his views, but questioned certain of his
premises. Over the period of a few days, I was amazed to see
a civil and intelligent conversation ensue between the three
of them, after which point, Fred, who is very intelligent
and adept at arguing his positions actually came to a friendly
agreement with Sam and Hilda, and resolved that he would actually
take a look at Levinas, though he had originally been totally
opposed to anything that smacked of the postmodern.”
In conclusion, it seems given that the reality of the online
world is that it provides more freedom
from the usual social restraints than life irl. This freedom
is sometimes abused by people who overlook – deliberately
or otherwise – the reality that the characters you find
online are representative of real-life characters just like
you or me, and that we all owe each other respect while we
engage in conversations which, if allowed to proceed on some
appropriate level in their multi-dimensionality, can enrich
all those who are involved. If we use that freedom, and perhaps
our superior verbal fighting skills, to try to put down, embarrass,
show up, or totalize others, that soon gets unpleasant for
most participants.
Although we don’t want prissy, simplistic Barneys running
about sprouting syrupy “I love you, you love me”
platitudes, it may be well to think of love from time to time
when involved in a group. Tavistock-style human relations
groups are excellent laboratories for analysis of power and
authority, but perhaps they leave out the Levinasian appreciation
of the other as infinite. For us to all get along and welcome
one another with all our diversity of culture, of age, gender,
sexual orientation, nationality, age and educational background,
we need to keep this in mind to create a viable, rich and
interesting forum where all can benefit from the incredible
talent that’s represented in the diverse array of people
gathered together under the ISPSO umbrella.
There is no ideal formula for how to create a workable, interesting,
intellectually challenging online discussion group where each
honors the other. All we can do is develop general principles
and guidelines, and keep in mind that the communications in
the online environment represent the saying of embodied human
beings. To quote a student reflecting on the online experience:
Without how you sound and your body language, I think you
have to write to be tactful. You can say things online very
critically, and come across as abrupt. But face-to-face you
are more tactful. So when you do it in writing, you have to
be careful.
In terms of body experience, we can keep in mind that we and
others experience each other in terms of sight and sound,
as already mentioned. But we also experience one another in
terms of touch. Perhaps we should be aware of whether we are
hurting or touching another or whether we feel touched when
we communicate in this world.
Bibliography
Berman, Joshua and Bruckman, Amy S., “The Turing Game:
Exploring Identity in an Online Environment”, in Convergence,
7(3), 2001
Bernard Shaw, G., Pygmalion, Penguin Books, London, 1916
Bion, W.R., Experiences in Groups, Tavistock Publications,
1961
Birdwhistell, R.L., Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body
Motion Communication, University of Pennsylvania Publications
in Conduct and Communication
Descartes, R., Meditations, in The Rationalists, Anchor Books,
New York, 1974
Freud, S., Studies on Hysteria, in Standard Edition Vol.
2
Freud, S., The Future of an Illusion,
Fromm, Erich, Art of Loving
Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time,
Husserl, E., The Idea of Phenomenology, Martinus Nijhoff,
1973
Ihde, D. Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction, State
University of New York Press, 1986
Ito, Mizuko, Virtually Embodied: The Reality of Fantasy in
a Multi-User Dungeon, in Internet Culture, ed. David Porter,
Routledge, New York, 1996
Laing, R.D., Politics of Experience,
Laing, R.D., Self and Other
Leonard, Andrew, Bots, Penguin Books, 1998
Levinas, E., Totality and Infinity,
Levinas, E., Of God Who Comes to Mind,
Lewis, C.S., The Chronicles of Narnia, HarperCollins, New
York
Lilly, J., Center of the Cyclone,
Lyotard, J.F., The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1999
Miller, Eric, Videoconferencing for Folklorists, at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~emailler/for_folklorists.html
Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
Pirsig, Lila
Robinson, Paulette, The Body Matrix: A Phenomenological Exploration
of Student Bodies Online, in Educatinal Technology and Society,
3(3), 2000
Russo, Tracy, and Benson, Tracy, Leaning with Invisible Others:
Perceptions of Online Presence and their Relationship to Cognitive
and Affective Learning, in Educational Technology & Society,
8(1), 2005, 54-62
Turing, Alan, Can Digital Computers Think, in “The
Essential Turing: Seminal Writings in Computing, Logic, Philosophy,
Artificial Intelligence, And Artificial Life; Plus The Secrets
Of Enigma” by B. Jack Copeland, Alan Mathison Turing
Turkle, S., Life on the Screen
Weizenbaum J., Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement
to Calculation,
Various articles.
Virtual Reality and its Discontents
Internet Culture
The “Gestalt” drawings (vase woman’s face)
Movie where Laing and 2 others interview the same patient.
Movie: The Time Bandits
Movie: The Purple Rose of Cairo
Movie: Ghostworld
Movie: You’ve Got Mail
Pictures (Escher, gestalt) from http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/optill/othis.htm
Article online: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/discipline/sociol-anthrop/staff/kibbymarj/maledisp.html
Marjorie Kibby & Brigid Costello
Displaying the phallus: Masculinity and the performance of
sexuality on the Internet
Men & Masculinities V1 N4 April 1999:352-364
© Copyright, June 2005, Murray Gordon. Murray@LivingPhilosophy.org
Suggestions for Running
a Succesful Online Discussion Group
1. The person in control of the “physical” keys
for the group should not be the same person as the moderator
of the discussion. There is generally one person who can decide
whether a particular person can still participate in the group,
and can exclude any individual by locking them out. As an
analogy, when one gives a presentation at an event, the person
giving the presentation may use a projector, microphone, etc.,
but does not set up the projector and other audio-visual equipment,
and is not physically in control of the equipment. The moderator
may, however, have certain authority to request an individual
be admitted or excluded from the group. The “physical”
sysop should then comply with the moderator’s request.
2. It is helpful in an online group if each participant is
introduced to the group in some way – preferably each
person introduces themselves. In an educational online group,
where grades may be involved, where performance is measured
in some way, the group leader/teacher can call upon any member
requesting him/her to respond in some way. I believe that
a group moderator should consider how to encourage other participants
to participate. The problem of lurkers demands that there
should be some concern with encouraging everyone to participate.
3. There should be a statement of intent and rules of etiquette
for the group. These should explain that the group is concerned
with exploring a particular topic or range of topics, and
participants should respect one another, and try to build
on another’s views, rather than adopt unassailable absolutist
positions, which invite opposition from others with opposing
absolutist positions. This could be called the mutually positive
appreciative approach (or an approach based on phenomenology,
which begins with the understanding that we each have different
perspectives, and the object, if any; of the groups is to
consider what is valuable in each person’s perspective,
rather than trying to reach a fixed, ideological position.)
Some Definitions
irl: In real life
LISTSERV:
An automatic mailing list server developed by Eric Thomas
for BITNET in 1986. When e-mail is addressed to a LISTSERV
mailing list, it is automatically broadcast to everyone on
the list. The result is similar to a newsgroup or forum, except
that the messages are transmitted as e-mail and are therefore
available only to individuals on the list.
LISTSERV is currently a commercial product marketed by L-Soft
International. Although LISTSERV refers to a specific mailing
list server. The term is sometimes used incorrectly to refer
to any mailing list server. Another popular mailing list server
is Majordomo, which is freeware.
(From: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/Listserv.html)
Lurkers:
Refmon:
The refmon is there in the chat room to assist participants
that are having trouble with CU or have questions about, well,
just about anything.
(From: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/341/refmon.html?200525
Some oppositions:
Reality – Fantasy
Liberating fantasy – Punishing/persecuting fantasy
Illusion – Delusion
Modern – Postmodern
Normal everyday English – New vocabulary and language
on the ‘net
Theory – practice
One truth – Multiple perspectives
Real life – The game (in reference to MUDs)
Body – mind
Embodied – Mind-oriented
Anglo American philosophy – phenomenology
Absolute – multi-threaded
A vase or two faces?
Escher print
Vanity
San Francisco Street
|
