“That’s why it’s called the web: because you get stuck in it”
I’ve been hearing about Jason Spingarn-Koff’s Second Life documentary, Life 2.0, for probably close to a year now, watched the trailer a couple of months back, and was reminded of it again yesterday. Made in 2009, premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and winner in the Best Documentary Feature category of the 2010 Philadelphia Film Festival, Life 2.0
… follows a group of people whose lives are dramatically transformed by the virtual world, Second Life. They enter a new reality, whose inhabitants assume alternate personas in the form of avatars – digital alter egos that can be sculpted and manipulated to the heart’s desire. The film is foremost an intimate, character-based drama about people who look to a virtual world in search of something they are missing in their real lives. The results are unexpected and often disturbing: reshaping relationships, identities, and ultimately the very notion of reality. Mixing high drama and quirky humor, the film uniquely explores the promise, perils, and implications of virtual worlds for society at large.
I’ve not watched the full documentary, nor yet persuaded myself that I want to spend $25.94 to pre-order the DVD to be released on 10th January 2012. Consequently I can comment only on the short trailer, below (please watch it and read on).
The promotional blurb, blockquoted above, not only establishes the tone of the documentary (we can expect that it will veer more towards the sensationalist than to the augmentationist mundanity of, for example, teaching and learning, or of virtual office working) but also touches issues germane to this blog:
… lives are dramatically transformed
… in search of something they are missing in their real lives
… reshaping relationships, identities, and ultimately the very notion of reality
… explores the promise, perils, and implications of virtual worlds for society at large
The final sentence, in particular, is a matter of especial interest and concern in light of very plausible predictions by Kurzweil and many others that virtual worlds will mediate a significant percentage of all social communication by mid-century. The astounding success of Facebook in recent years has already profoundly changed the way many of us spend our leisure time, how we shape and maintain our social lives, how we think of friendship, how we do business, how we reflect on our lives and share those reflections with others; and yet its social and psychological impact is still little understood. Transition to a three-dimensional avatar-centric medium will inevitably bring with it even more dramatic social and cultural transformation.
Ever agnostic about the Second Life experience as in any way ‘real’, I was struck by Philip Rosedale’s succinct observation in the documentary that “Things are real because they’re there with us and we believe in them”. Or, perhaps better, that we willingly suspend disbelief. I’d welcome comments below from anyone who has seen the full-length film.
