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

["Ana Valdés" <agora158@gmail.com>]

For me it's the same debate than in the realm of the free sofware
versus the owned softare (Microsoft versus Linux etc). In "owned
software" you can't decide the rules or participate in a creative way,
you have a code provided by others, the decisions are taken by for the
corporation's board, etc.
In Linux and other "free software" it's not a board, all is
descentralized and able to generate many nodes in a rhizomic way,
selfsustainable.
I believed SL was such a thing, and was very glad when Linden let the
code be free.
But they are still controlling the money and the ownership of land.
And that's the real power in SL.
That's the reason why the virtual sweatshops and the sex and gambling
schemes are still giviing so much revenue to the brokers as Ansche
Chung.
I think the interaction in virtual spaces should be criticized and
watched as other things, and it's ethics and values discussed.
Why should SL, a kind of the Sims dystopia, be free from these
discussion? Only because people are doing art there? And again, art
for whom? Art in which context?

Ana

On 8/13/07, Christy Dena <cdena@cross-mediaentertainment.com> wrote:
> 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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Skarpnäcks Allé 45 ll tr
12833 Skarpnäck
Sweden
tel +468-943288
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"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth
with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you
will always long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci