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Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation
Hello Avatar! Or, {llSay(0, "Hello, Avatar!"); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. Coleman examines a crucial aspect of our cultural shift from analog to digital: the continuum between online and off-, what she calls the "x-reality" that crosses between the virtual and the real. She looks at the emergence of a world that is neither virtual nor real but encompasses a multiplicity of network combinations. And she argues that it is the role of the avatar to help us express our new agency -- our new power to customize our networked life.
By avatar, Coleman means not just the animated figures that populate our screens but the gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities -- in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. Exploring such network activities as embodiment, extreme (virtual) violence, and the work in virtual reality labs, and offering sidebar interviews with designers and practitioners, she argues that what is new is real-time collaboration and copresence, the way we make connections using networked media and the cultures we have created around this. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject -- all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.
By avatar, Coleman means not just the animated figures that populate our screens but the gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities -- in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. Exploring such network activities as embodiment, extreme (virtual) violence, and the work in virtual reality labs, and offering sidebar interviews with designers and practitioners, she argues that what is new is real-time collaboration and copresence, the way we make connections using networked media and the cultures we have created around this. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject -- all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 20, 2012
An essential read for a network-theory interpretation of online identity. Best at demolishing notions of the separation of online and offline worlds. Its idealistic glibness may be a factor of its very short length (about 150pp, with lots of pictures), or a particular MIT worldview.
November 19, 2012
This book left me with something of a conundrum. Previously, I had read a description of Coleman's book, which was heavy on words such as "identity," "networked media," "avatar," and "virtual"--basic buzzwords that made me dismiss the book as not having anything worthwhile to say. Then I heard Coleman lecture in person, and decided to come back to the book. So, the question is, did the reading justify my impression that this was old words on new media? Or do I have to eat crow? Let me put it this way: these feathers are really hard to swallow.
Granted, the book takes a while to come into its own; the first two chapters recapitulate a lot of what I was already familiar with in terms of avatars and the human tendency to assign agency to things. What Coleman really brought to the discussion was a focus on variance: x-reality, or a continuum of difference rather absolute difference between real and virtual, and a recognition that virtual similitude comes more from the confluence of a wide variety of multimedia rather than visual fidelity.
Chapter three, though, is where things really come into their own, as Coleman bases the chapter around her interview with a virtual cannibal in Second Life--a man who messaged back and forth with interested others about cooking others and eating them--in order to make the point that these people sought to make the virtual real not through technological means, but by bringing existing real-world BDSM practices into the virtual space. Chapter four continues this discussion with the topic of networked presence and avatars, and the conclusion uses ARGs and other new media engagements to argue that the x-reality is here. One thing I found particularly interesting in the book is that Coleman rejects the postmodern take on identity in digital identities, saying that we're not fragmented, but unified between virtual and real forms. While Coleman is most definitely not proposing a return to essentialism or modernism, she does seem to be promoting some concept of the human in the digital. Considering that a lot of the popular theory I'm reading at the moment seems to be trying ways to go beyond or at least around the human (Object Oriented Ontology, posthumanism, animal theory), it's something of a novel approach.
Granted, the book takes a while to come into its own; the first two chapters recapitulate a lot of what I was already familiar with in terms of avatars and the human tendency to assign agency to things. What Coleman really brought to the discussion was a focus on variance: x-reality, or a continuum of difference rather absolute difference between real and virtual, and a recognition that virtual similitude comes more from the confluence of a wide variety of multimedia rather than visual fidelity.
Chapter three, though, is where things really come into their own, as Coleman bases the chapter around her interview with a virtual cannibal in Second Life--a man who messaged back and forth with interested others about cooking others and eating them--in order to make the point that these people sought to make the virtual real not through technological means, but by bringing existing real-world BDSM practices into the virtual space. Chapter four continues this discussion with the topic of networked presence and avatars, and the conclusion uses ARGs and other new media engagements to argue that the x-reality is here. One thing I found particularly interesting in the book is that Coleman rejects the postmodern take on identity in digital identities, saying that we're not fragmented, but unified between virtual and real forms. While Coleman is most definitely not proposing a return to essentialism or modernism, she does seem to be promoting some concept of the human in the digital. Considering that a lot of the popular theory I'm reading at the moment seems to be trying ways to go beyond or at least around the human (Object Oriented Ontology, posthumanism, animal theory), it's something of a novel approach.
June 15, 2015
What one sees in and thus gains from Hello Avatar as with all books depends on one's background and purpose. I am very interested in HCI, UX, and emergent digital communities and subcultures: those with similar interests will find Hello Avatar similarly rewarding; those without may see little novelty in its content. The author Beth Coleman examines the substance and interrelation of virtual identities we necessarily manifest through our use of communication technologies and associated network media. Virtual identities were separate from physical identities in the early days of the internet when the immature virtual world had weak connections to the physical one. However, the virtual and physical worlds are now more strongly connected than ever with many coördinating communication technologies and widespread adoption and as consequence so have the connections between virtual and physical identities grown stronger. Coleman, possessing a techno-optimistic worldview common at MIT, argues that virtual identities augment our physical lives instead of supplanting them as purported by techno-pessimists. The virtual world is not a cheap pastiche or only a mere reflection of the physical world — it is an extension and a super layer that enhances it and provides its users, us, with greater agency. Though I'm reviewing in 2015 a book written in 2011, I've seen many phenomena identified by Coleman come to fruition in recent years and have been validated.
February 5, 2017
Book exploring the history and philosophy of virtual personas, or "avatars", and the psychological risks and pleasures of living online and offline simultaneously. A good primer for anyone interested in how we got to where we are now, complete with short interviews with other writers and theorists - and an extended discussion of a cannibal on Second Life.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews