Friday, May 9, 2008

Twitter helps deliver baby sibling for Augmentationists and Immersionists: The Emergents

Heavy use of Twitter for the past couple of weeks made me realize that there's a group of Immersionists who have evolved enough to deserve a new classification. Let's call them Emergents.

While Old-School Immersionists maintain a distinct boundary between the virtual and physical worlds, Emergents extend their Avatarian identity into the human environment through tools like Twitter. Sophrosyne Stenvaag was kind enough to comment:
I'd also add Laterals: there are half a dozen or so SL Digital People in my WoW guild, who openly say, "I'm [avatar name] from SL," as I do.
What seems unique about this to me is that the Avatarians are reading and writing tweets while they are not rezzed within Second Life. The Avatarian identity is independent of the virtual world that spawned it.

Pretty damn cool.

emergents b

7 comments:

  1. Botgirl - this is a *terrific* new tool for analysis!

    I'd also add Laterals: there are half a dozen or so SL Digital People in my WoW guild, who openly say, "I'm [avatar name] from SL," as I do.

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  2. And then you have to add in the people who use Skype, Messenger, and Google talk while in world, while not in world, etc.

    And then the silly people who comment on blogs while in or out of world ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. sophrosyne: Thanks!!! I modified the image and credited your comment in the text.

    harper: damn. :) I'll amend the image again over the weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I read the 'AgAv' in this, the Agent Avatar -> A single online identity, adapting to it's (virtual) environment. It's not quite a 1 on 1 match as the SL avatar seems to have become the most dominant (the agav) in the examples, on the other hand, i find it more likely the SL avatar is just another part of the AgAv as is the facebook profile, wow character or twitter/flickr account.

    The common 'quality' of the AgAv shapes is the disconnection from the physical realm (anonymity or a clear psychological line between online and off line presence) - which is the same for all online identities, so it would make sense to see something like a single, online identity over multiple networks.

    Prometeus touches on this:
    http://digado.nl/user-generated-content-20-the-prosumer.html

    (scroll down for the prometeus clip)

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  5. digado: Thanks for the great comment and interesting link.

    I wonder how the conception of AgAV applies to one human with multiple avatar accounts? Or one avatar account shared by multiple humans?

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  6. Re: the AvAg concept

    Princess Ivory is my identity across multiple online/virtual "communities:" SL, blogs, Flickr, MyBlog, Slide.com, etc. This list just keeps growing, and they are all interconnected.

    At the same time, I have a handful of alt accounts in SL. I use them when needed (they have different personalities, looks, genders, etc), but none of them have ever quite caught on to the point that they become "me." They remain very much a separate tool I use within SL, often for anonymity. I have never integrated them into other worlds, and they have never been representative of my "self" in the sense the Princess Ivory is. She is very much "me" and I am very much "her" and there is often no distinguishing between the two. It's really quite fascinating to consider.

    Princess Ivory

    ReplyDelete
  7. princess: I find it a fascinating issue to consider as well. I really appreciate you sharing your story.

    Did Princess Ivory originate in Second Life?

    ReplyDelete

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A beautiful thought experiment personified through the imagined perspective of a self-aware avatar. My creator's site can is at http://fourworlds.tumblr.com