Charles Taylor and Culture

Some conceptual refreshing from my introductory IR course:

• The cultural world contains three elements - traditional culture (world of beliefs and practice, cultural identities, ethnicity, race/religion), popular culture (global consumer culture - westernization/cultural imperialism), and global political culture (spread of western ideals and norms of political and economic behavior)


• Culture and national identity - what is national identity like in Second Life


• Charles Taylor
  
• Individualism over communal values
• Dominance of institution reasoning
• Technology and instrumental thinking limits our choices and marginalizes alternatives

Space Structure

The space will be constructed in a way that will allow people to transport to different actual examples in Second Life that will explore the notion of digital utopianism vis-à-vis cultural imperialism. Teleportation.

Changes and Developments

I've begun to get a lot more theoretical backbone to the project. Recommended to me by my adviser IR, Steve Lamy, is Edward Said's Orientalism, a book that had an incredible impact in the field of cultural studies, particularly on the subject of cultural imperialism. It wasn't available in any USC libraries as they were all checked out. Amazon, here I come...

Also, a great brainstorm in class lead to a real reshaping of my thesis. It is still somewhat vague at this point, but I'm dropping the notion of a contained study for participants. Rather, I want to explore the world of Second Life with an assumption and two questions in mind. Firstly, the assumption is that Second Life is built out of a theoretical/philosophical movement that we can call "digital utopianism". The two questions I wish to explore then is whether or not Second Life lives up to the expectations of "digital utopianism" and how its success in this sense is related to cultural imperialism in a digital space.

Article in GOOD Magazine

An interesting exposé in GOOD Magazine on Second Life.

First Attempt

Very bare bones at this point. Don't particularly like it at this point but it is a start. I'm thinking more of a half-dome. This MUST happen by next week.

Tower of Prims: Level 1 Complete!

Ivory Tower Library of Primitives

I'm beginning my journey into construction. First off - Ivory Tower Library of Primitives. My goal is to get through Level 1 by Wednesday (10/10).

»Visit ITLP