RE: [-empyre-] Virtual sweatshops, SL:s dark side?

"Christy Dena" <cdena@cross-mediaentertainment.com> · Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:12:58 +1000

Hello Ana and others,

Help me understand your argument. Is it correct that you are saying that
because SL was created by a company who wants to make money, many people in
SL are engaging in consumerist ideals, it is presented in the media as an
ideal utopia and there are many who undertake unethical practices in SL that
ALL who are in it are therefore one of the above? 

Or is it just that because of the hype about SL you're looking for an
alternate dialogue?

Best,
Christy

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Ana Valdés
Sent: Sunday, 12 August 2007 21:57
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] Virtual sweatshops, SL:s dark side?

I take here the liberty of "reusing" an old post in Trebor Scholtz
list IDC, regaerding SL. I think it's a real dilemma why people "use"
SL as a research environment or an experimental milieu without
critiizing the grounds which support the mere existens of SL. The
lacking democracy, the control of citizens opinions, the use of
virtual sweatshops to generate added value to the manufactured goods
sold in SL. And I find the argument "fI Residents recreate suburban
sprawl in SL, that is probably for the same
reasons as in real life. People like space and privacy and dont like too
many
rules (i.e. zoning), these factors will inevitably give rise to sprawl if
there
is no planning." a bit shallow.

The suburb is not what a resident want but what the resident get from
social planners who think in heteronormative and monogamous ways,
where the "nuclear family" is still the model to reproduce.

It's maybe time to resurrect Engels pamphlet "The Holy Family", still
high readable material.

As I wrote before, gated communities, safe worlds without criminality
are a dream of social planners wanting to create utopies. It reminds
me about Buckminster Full designs, or Le Corbusier hives or Bauhaus
social architecture.

I still wish to read critical approaches to SL "beyond the hype"

Ana

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2006/12/07/virtual-worlds-real-potential-imaginary-
numbers

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6870901/

http://jiplp.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1/7/481

That's really interesting and I really wish more researchers could be
engaged in the studio of Second Life's conditions and behaviours.
A world without democracy, where the individual is constricted to
"mature contempt" islands, where the discussion made in official
forums is controlled by the omnipotent and omniscent Linden Lab.
I read the headlines from last week's turbulence in SL. "terrorist
attack in Second Life", "cyberterrorism". What is virtual terrorism?
It reminds me about Julian Dibbell's excellent book "My tiny life",
where a virtual rape was discussed and put on trial.
And about precariety and workers rights we should discuss Anshe Chung,
the real estate broker avatar for Ailin Graef, is known to use workers
from her nativev China to make virtual wares in places similar to
sweatshops.
Virtual sweatshops are also used for games as Everquest or Ultima
Online, where macros can be used to generate or reproduce objects who
can be sold or traded in the games or outside the games.
The virtual sweatshops (or more clear, the real sweatshops) are in the
real life and populates av real workers, they make virtual wares but
they are treated as all other precarious workers: they work day and
night in dangerous conditions, exposed to datasmog and radiation of
the screens.
Many of them are in the maquila zone between Mexico and the US, Graafs
are in China.
Ana

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