The Death and Life of the Digital City

The technology isn’t astounding. It isn’t really virtual space as there is no real attempt to blur the boundaries between the player and the world of the game. But, it stands in for space; it takes the place of space. Everything is recognizable in the ways Monopoly pieces are recognizable. The little silver shoe. Green houses and red hotels. But simply by borrowing these symbols, it invites us to behave like we might as if we were moving through space. Moving through the Sims world, we apply what we already know and so endow spatial behavior onto these new artificial spaces. You log into a chat room, but “meet” in a friends Sims family room. And never having played the Sims I have all sorts of questions. Can you get from one place to anyplace else in the same amount of time? Is there separation in the online world, locations that are better than others because of they are closer to the trendiest players, the most exciting neighbors? If there is distance, is there time and do these things have value?

Would an online Barnes and Noble that allowed you to approach the shelves and scan the spines of books be more appealing and more lucrative than Amazon’s numbered lists. Could you rummage through piles of goods spread thick on tables on a redesigned EBay? And what of my own field? Could the internet be littered with digital versions of real buildings, advertising the accomplishments of their architects? Might they not include everything that was cut from the building to save time and money? And possibly, would they not compete with the buildings on the other side of the screen.

A scenario.
A digital camera; a series of sensors. One could map one’s own habitation of his own house onto the online world. Like in the real world, squatting outside a window would provide a show. But what if one entered the digital house and began to participate in actions simultaneously underway offline? How could these virtual responses to real actions affect that life? First, it’s a conceptual art project. But after being assimilated, it’s a consumer’s toy and finally a familiar piece of daily routine. A bored fashion student in New York could help you get dressed in the morning. An insomniac in Bangalore could let you know you added too much salt to your korma.

Why would anyone ask for these intrusions? Immediacy. When impatient, I don’t want to have to wait for email, check my inbox, or wait for the next post to a friend’s blog. On lonelier days, I want the interruption and the chance to feel the impact of another on my life. It’s the impulse that makes me want to turn a storefront into a home—my own home—and drink beer on my porch while watching the street. Sims is for the introverted flaneurs of the digital world who come to life walking on pixilated streets. And it’s only a matter of time before Jane Jacobs picks up her pen again to write an addendum to “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” There will be many new sets of eyes on these streets, but they’ll be looking from across the world.

Sims in Space

Sims in Space

On a train traveling between Boston and my family’s home in Connecticut, I watched from across the aisle as a woman worked on her lap top to build herself first a character, then a group of friends and finally a house— in preparation for admission to the online Sims community. And it remains the most provocative thing that I saw during my holiday break.

At first I was just a voyeur of the technology. Scrolling through facial features, a three dimensional figure’s face bulges and sags according to the user’s tastes. The face blinks, turns and cocks its head, seemingly impatient for its own completion. This Pinocchio is a teenager with no time for its creator. The disaffected movements of the simulated character are just an attempt at keeping the puppet from being static, but the result shows that boredom is the easiest of human emotions for the computer to capture. Features were chosen and a suitably personalized hipster wardrobe picked out I must admit to taking some time to check out the physical endowments of these young men and women while they stood in their underwear. They’re bulging in all of the right places (even if the more interesting ones aren’t customizable).

But it was when my neighbor across the aisle began building her house on a gridded “suburban” lot that I started thinking that the Sims might be more than a game but a glimpse of something coming fast to our digital world. The Sims series of games assembles a palette of options—whether for building a city, a civilization, or a family—and the thousands ways these options may interact with each other provides the perception of free choice and control. The internet provides a similarly outstanding range of choices, but again these choices are along already established paths. You don’t know where web surfing will take you; you only know that someone has already been there before.

All of this leads to persistent questions about the boundaries of self-expression on the internet. And whether creating virtual three-dimensional spaces like those in the online Sims game expand those possibilities or simply provide an illusion of infinite possibilities. I’ll get back to this.

Science (or my faith in...)

A friend provoked me today through questions asked with a smile about my belief in science. She was prepared for the conversation, as a graduate student of the anthropology of science, and she enjoyed her provocations. That a cat interrupted perturbed with any topic unrelated to her, or that the room fell into shadows as we talked gave evidence that the natural world cared less about our pursuit of each other's views on the world.

Though academic and filled with digressions on the shapes of trees and the appropriateness of wearing used leather, I felt that the conversation was important because we kept coming back to faith. And faith is a word I don't use well. It motivates some people to act. It's also what the best education can bury, obscure, and possibly even do away with completely. In red/blue rhetoric, faith might be distilled between faith in religion (skewed towards fanaticism) and faith in science (leading toward a vague, possibly amoral, view of the world). It's an unfair choice, maybe, but common enough. It's how a creationist chips away at another's belief in evolution. And it forces a response. Are they the same? Is my faith (to make it more personal) in a knowable universe (that may never be fully known) the same guiding principle to me as another's faith in the Book of Mormon to them? Does faith necessarily deal in certainty?

If I ask too many questions, I won't move towards answers (assuming there are answers to be had). For tonight, I'll just speak from my gut. Science won't get me out of bed in the morning. It does help me sort through the many voices in the world and pick those to whom I'll listen. It privileges education (and is admittedly based on my belief that the universities are not liberal tools of indoctrination). But, it doesn't help me live in the world or to live with others, except when if offers rich fields for Sunday afternoon conversation. It may, however, keep me from finding faith elsewhere, particularly in religion which has done well in proving itself as a source of inspiration for daily life. When one has the luxury to shop around for culture and beliefs, it's very easy to go hungry. And despite a perfect omelet pulled off the stove while writing this, I do feel like it has been a while since I've left feeling satisfied.

a politics of potatos

Reading a profile of the last twenty-four hors in the Ohio headquarters of ACT prompts me to finally say something publicly about the election, if only to get things straight privately.

Kerry got four million more votes than did Gore. Against the same man. Bush was an equally undesireable candidate four years ago, and though millions of us huddled together in the nicer parts of cities would say he and those around him proved our worst fears, the election was eerily similar. But in four years time more people have decided to look out at the world as Republicans than as Democrats.

We live in a "centrist" country that is increasingly being described as right of center. Of course the center is relative depending on where you are. My center and a Canadian friend's might be different. Head, heart, belly-button, crotch. Foreign policy, faith, economics, and fate. It's a Mr. Potato Head of values and priorities. I put the eyes here, someone I don't know in Nebraska's putting them somewhere different (and in my worst moods I'm assuming that theirs lacks eyes and ears entirely, but is endowed with several mouths and clunky shoes).

I don't have answers. An attempt at drawing conclusions preaches to an audience I don't have, and doesn't leave me certain that I can follow my own advice. But I am moved by the following values that leave me hopeful we might move in more productive ways: The accomodation of difference. Equisite tolerance. Attempts at openness.