Anthropology of virtual worlds - Boellstorff
Great to have found recently this interview with etopianews with Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff about his book - "Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human" - with which I come into conversation with in my 400-page, .docx, Naked Harbin actual / virtual ethnographic manuscript.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XkZMXtDEWM
"The thing about our everyday lives is that they have always been virtual ... human social life has always been virtual ... "
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Here's a paragraph from my 400 page actual / virtual Harbin Hot Springs' book manuscript about the 'virtual,' in which I come into conversation with Tom's focus on Techne (e.g. craft or making for him, and I read also partly 'technology'), with my complementary emphasis on information, as in information technology, but especially communication:
I'll explore how these informational, technological, constructive, and particularly communicative practices of examining an anthropological field site in terms of the virtual – where virtual Harbin for ethnographic study here refers to what emerges culturally through communication, vis-à-vis all information processes (and not exclusively in multimedia, by any means) – and furthers practices of ethnographically constructing the actual and the virtual, and of developing new forms of anthropological representation, in understanding the virtual. Boellstorff “suggests that human life has always been virtual in a sense. So much of our daily life is not touchable, … rather it’s about language or a norm you can’t touch … how is it that we’ve always been virtual and what is new and not new. (Boellstorff, Tom. 2013. “Tom Boellstorff talks about "Coming of Age in Second Life”.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XkZMXtDEWM Los Angeles, CA: etopianews). So virtual Harbin in this book refers to 4 aspects of conceiving of the virtual (the virtual: defined, 39, 76, 122-123, 377, … ), a) as something “that is so in essence or effect, although not formally or actually” so something not physical; b) “something not physical, but created by software to appear so” (Apple dictionary), both metaphorically, and especially vis-a-vis Harbin Hot Springs, as visionary, too; visionary here includes giving shape or form to what could be in a shared sense among human bodyminds as culture, and Harbin's counterculture, vis-a-vis its pool area, can find form in virtual expressions” c) primatologically, as symbolic and across primates that use symbols, d) “One useful definition of “virtual” is “ a philosophical term meaning 'not actually, but as if'” especially vis-a-vis digitally constructed and informed processes. In the next volume of my Harbin project (of possibly five volumes and one, digital, cyber, virtual Harbin), I plan to build a cyber, virtual Harbin Hot Springs, probably in a Harbin Bubble Glasses, or emerging cyber glasses, and write about this in terms of a further, actual – virtual ethnographic comparison.
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