The Rhetoric of GM

I saw this commercial today on TV

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and thought it was an interesting rhetorical move

“A lot of Americans didn’t agree with giving GM a second chance”

Aren’t we, as a culture, all for giving somebody a second chance when they screw up? We’re supposed to recognize that everybody will mess up and be willing to give them a chance to redeem themselves. Kind of a Christian forgiveness thing.

The GM bailout, then, becomes giving somebody an opportunity to try again. Not a really expensive move to save an industry that committed a form of economic suicide via lethargy. (note, I’m a supporter of the GM bailout)

“We have repaid our government loan in full, with interest. Five years ahead of the original schedule”

Apparently, that statement can be called into question. But still, don’t we like people who meet their debts? And don’t we respect people who pay off their home mortgage early?

Cutting-edge Technology

And then, there’s the images in the background. A lot of people working, but they tend to be white-collar engineering types. Not blue collar assembly line workers. Maybe the jobs they want people to think they provide?

Take note of the shots you see of the cars, too. They tend to be really high-tech. There’s the plug-in electric car. The car on a giant pin cushion. The car zooming around a race track. None of the pick-up trucks you used to see.

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Really interesting commercial here. GM did a really good job invoking a number of images that Americans would like. The good guy who screwed up. The company who is pushing boundaries and creating jobs that are “respectable.”

And they’re not running from the past. They don’t try to cover up the bailout (though they never name the price tag). And they admit that people’s trust in them is seriously damage.

As a rhetor, I’ve got to say, “Kudos, GM”

Virtual Reality Revisited: Social Media (part 3)

This is part 3 in a series of posts that look to revisit the concept of virtual reality in a web 2.0 / social media / cloud computing Internet. Part 1 is here. And part 2 is here. In this particular post, I want to talk about the ways that social media play into the concept of virtual reality.

When I first started playing around with the idea for these posts, I had recently demoed Facebook and Twitter for my parents (my mom had just created an account). When I talked about how Facebook allowed you to make friends that you never actually met in real life, I described them as “virtual world” friends. My father took to the idea, but argued that they were an extension of the physical friends and didn’t entirely exist in the virtual world (since they were generally made through connections with physical friends). And that got me thinking about how the physical world had melded so well with the virtual.

Facebook

And Facebook may be the best example of that. I’m thinking of my undergrad students – and the fact that they immediately log onto Facebook when they walk into the computer classroom before class. But it’s what they do on Facebook that gets me thinking about virtual reality.

They develop an identity inside Facebook that may or may not correspond with their identity in the physical world. Very often their Facebook identities are much more outgoing, brazen, and frank than their in-class ones (though I can’t speak to their out-of-class identities).

And they maintain friendships with people they would never see again outside of Facebook. The majority of them keep in touch with their friends from high school that they won’t see for another 22-24 years (at the high school reunion).

And they develop new friendships with people they’ve never physically met. These tend to be friends of friends, or people in their networks (such as people in the Texas Tech network). Now, they may one day meet these Facebook friends, but that’s definitely questionable.

All three of these features strike me as remarkably “virtual” when it comes to discussing reality. Having an identity that is distinct from the physical one is a hallmark trait of virtual realities. And developing relationships and communities that don’t exist in the physical world is another. But I’m really hard pressed to make any kind of argument that the virtual world of Facebook is disconnected from the physical world. Rather, my students exist in something of a blend between the two. One feeds the other. The virtual world of Facebook is made stronger because of the physical relationships. And the physical world is made stronger because of the virtual relationships. The line between virtual and physical is really blurred.

I’m thinking to a panel I sat in at CCCC2010 a couple weeks back. The presenter was talking about charity groups that let you “adopt” African children. World Vision is one she referenced. Child Fund International is another. An interesting twist that was highly effective as a fund raiser for these groups is to make a Facebook community for the African villages. Apparently these groups will set these villagers up with their own Facebook groups that others from around the world can join (here’s Child Fund International). This gives the villagers more of an identity and leads to more action to help them.

Now, if you’re bonding with African villagers through a Facebook group, will you ever physically meet them? Most likely not. So, they exist for you only in a virtual sense. Yet, they aren’t simply constructs in a computer program. Rather, they have a physical presence just like you. It is only the relationship that is virtual.

YouTube

And much the same phenomenon happens with YouTube viral videos. There’s the new trend of YouTube stars popping up in which real individuals gain a virtual stardom. These individuals (after having posted some silly video, usually) develop their own fan base and followers and garner millions of views.

David after Dentist is a great example of this. David even has his own merchandising line now!

Numa Numa is another one – a guy who (as I understand) initially tried to hide from his new found Internet fame before embracing it

Now, these are both videos of real people that gain virtual fame, but there are virtual “people” who do much the same. The Dancing Baby, a 3D animation, was popular back in the 1990s. And those who play World of Warcraft will be intimately familiar with Leeroy Jenkins, a virtual character who has spawned a gaming legend amongst the flesh and blood players.

So, if we’re trying to figure out the relationship between the virtual reality of YouTube and the physical reality of the people looking at computer screens, it’s very hard to make much of a division. Indeed, even the “blurred line” analogy is a bad one because of the interconnectedness of the two worlds. David after Dentist’s physical and virtual existences are so intimately tied that they’re nearly impossible to separate. Numa Numa made a resurgence online because of physical world pressure. The separation between virtual and physical realities is more than just blurred – it’s nearly gone.

Augmented Reality

And that brings me to a trend that as of this post is recently emerging – augmented reality. As explained by the good people at Common Craft, it’s a way to use smartphone technology to provide extra information about the physical world. There’s an Android OS app called Layar that will take a real-time capture from your phone’s camera and present you with content from the Internet about what you’re looking at. The screen provides you with the camera’s view (namely, the buildings and geography you’re pointing at) and overlays it with content bubbles that tell you more about what you’re seeing.

Right now this technology is in its infancy, as everything I’ve seen is just Wikipedia-like factoids. But it has interesting potential as a way to garner restaurant reviews, find your way if you’re lost, and provide a kind of assisted tour in museums.

I just love this term, though. All of the blendings I’ve discussed happen asynchronously. Facebook relationships, YouTube stars, and literary escapes (see last week’s post) all develop over time. At any one moment, you’re clearly dealing with either the virtual or the physical world. But this takes that concept and makes them synchronous. You are interacting with both the virtual world and the physical at the exact same time. And that takes the line between the two and throws it right out the window (to blend many metaphors into one).

I wonder if there will be an augmented reality version of YouTube. I could point my phone’s camera at someone and see all of the social media postings she’s made and that have been made about her. It would be a great way to figure out if that guy in the office down the hall really is the Numa Numa guy.

Virtual Reality Revisited (part 2): What it used to be

This week is a follow-up to what started last week – a (for me at least) rather in-depth reconsideration of what virtual reality means in a Web 2.0/social networking Internet.

Last week I tried to provide an overview of how I wanted this series of posts to go. This week, I want to take a bit of time and talk about what virtual reality used to be. Or, more accurately, what people used to think virtual reality would be when it arrived.

There’s a popular conception of VR.

I personally like Michael Heim’s definition of this popular one:

What is virtual reality? A simple enough question.

We might anwer: “Here, try this arcade game. It’s from the Virtuality series created by Jonathan Waldern. Just put on the helmet and the datagloves, grab the control stick, and enter a world of computer animation. You turn your head and you see a three-dimensional, 360-degree, color landscape. The other players see you appear as an animated character. And lurking around somewhere will be the other animated warriors who will hunt you down. Aim, press the button, and destroy them before they destroy you. Give it a few minutes and you’ll get a feel for the game, how to move about, how to be part of a virtual world. That’s virtual reality!”

That’s probably the image that most people think of when they hear the term.

This concept of VR has been the focus of how many different movies/books/graphic novels/etc. in the past several years. It seemed to be especially popular back in the 80s and 90s. Take, for example, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Lawnmower Man.

But there’s a more academic one too

This is probably a glamorized, Star Trek’ed version of VR. Unfortunately, it’s a highly limited view of what VR is and can be. Rather than a digital recreation of the physical world where we all have super powers, there’s usually a much broader definition of the term.

Again here, I’m going to pull from Heim’s The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, but these are ideas that seem to be pretty universal in academic definitions of VR. See, for instance, Jonathan Steuer’s “Defining Virtual Reality: Dimensions Determining Telepresence” or “A Conceptual Virtual Reality Model” by Latta and Oberg. There’s a few bullet points that make up the more abstract definition of VR:

• Simulation: re-creating sensory experiences similar to “normal” reality
• Interaction: an “electronic representation with which [people] can interact”
• Artificiality: that is, not-quite-real
• Immersion: “sensory immersion in a virtual environment”
• Telepresence: being present in a place other than where your physical body resides

What I notice (and what you might) is that the Lawnmower Man version of VR fully works in this breakdown of VR’s components. It’s just one variant of the idea.

But another thing I notice that may not come out fully in this overly simplified definition is a separation between virtual reality and “normal” reality. Ideas like artificiality, immersion, and telepresence all involve a person moving her existence from one reality and placing it in another. The Matrix’s, well, matrix is probably the stereotypical example of this. When humans would “jack on” they would enter the matrix and be completely oblivious to the “real world” (Matrix geeks out there – is the term “jacking on” from this movie?).

Literature as VR

I find it interesting that the concept of VR can be traced back long before computers and silicon overtook the world. Though it wasn’t referred to in this term. I’m thinking here of the great works of fiction produced throughout the ages. And the pulp fiction. People, when reading about Ishmael, Huck Finn, Ali Baba’s 40 thieves, would escape into a reality that was not the real one. How many of us as children got lost in a book? Missed our stop on the bus ride home from school because we were engrossed in the story? Got in trouble for being up at 2am on a school night trying to finish that last chapter? This mental process seems to directly mirror the process involved in more contemporary notions of VR.

Simulation: Any good book will vividly duplicate the sensory experiences of the real world. My 10 year old niece is learning to write fiction stories right now – and she is constantly told to let the reader experience the event through sight, smell, sound, and such. Isn’t she being told to have her story simulate what the reader would experience in “normal” reality?

Interaction: Ok, I think this is the only one of the bullet point definitions that literature can’t match. When you get lost in a story, you’re trapped in the plot and characters that the author has created. There’s no significant way to influence how the end will come out or whether Edward runs away with Bella at the end.

But we do come up with ways to interact, don’t we? I remember creating “virtual” characters for the novels I read and inserting them into the plot. And “fan fiction” of popular media is a way to interact with the story line.

Now, there’s always the choose-your-own-adventure books that let you partially direct the plot, but they weren’t overtly popular.

Artificiality: And aren’t the realities of fiction really similar to our reality, with just a slight twist? Perhaps the people have superpowers or magical abilities. Or they are faced with a sentient whale. Or are placed in situations that seem feasible if unlikely. Or, well…

Immersion: This, of course, is the process of “losing” oneself in a book. Something that’s quite common, no?

Telepresence: Or placing yourself in a reality that is different from where your physical body resides. When a book is really good, don’t we find ourselves lost in its story, its reality?

Wrapping up

Where I want to leave off this week is here, where a concept of virtual reality used to reside. It’s not necessarily a Lawnmower Man or Matrix – like realm as Hollywood gives us. But rather, it’s a different world where we teleport ourselves for a time to live a different life.

Where I think this idea gets interesting is when we look at how virtual reality as a concept has evolved in the past couple years. No longer is it a world completely separate from our own. Instead, it’s one that is intimately and thoroughly intertwined with our “normal” one.

Next week I’ll start to explore that intertwining.

Virtual Reality Revisited (part 1)

Kind readers, kindly be patient with me as I stretch this next idea out over several posts. I’ve decided to start a multi-week series on virtual reality, or rather revisiting the concept in the context of a Web 2.0/social media/cloud computing world.

A few months back I moved offices. As part of that process, I ended up going through a number of old graduate class readings – including a class where we spent a great deal of time talking about virtual reality and its pros & cons. Seeing those pieces got me thinking about some of the predictions the authors made and how the vast majority of those predictions really haven’t come to fruition. This series of posts, then, is designed to see what went wrong (or, if you’re not post-apocalyptic-ally inclined, what went right).

What the predictions were

So, maybe the best place to start is what the predictions were. I think this may be next week’s post, as  it’s one in and of itself. But to summarize, a number of tech-rhet scholars in the late 20th century had a very divided view when it came to “normal” reality and virtual reality. They were seen as two entirely separate universes and people’s lives were seen as separated when they existed in one or the other.

Maybe the best example of that separation is what is arguably the first popular virtual reality – Second Life. Second Life, as it was originally conceived was a world entirely separate from the “normal” one, where you could go to create a separate identity. It’s notable that Second Life basically forbids you from letting your avatar’s name be the same as your own. In fact, you are locked into a certain set of predefined last names for your avatar for that very reason. The virtual reality (as originally envisioned) is completely severed from the “normal” one. (now, how that separation has changed is a later topic)

Add to this separation the attraction of virtual realities and you get the post-apocalyptic prediction of a number of scholars. They saw people become obsessed with early MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role playing games – basically Dungeons & Dragons online). And they saw those early gamers start spending more time in the virtual reality than the “normal” one. The prediction then became that we were heading toward a world in which people would spend their lives in a virtual reality to the neglect of the “normal” one. This prediction was really quite common in the sci fi of the day. Futurama, the sci fi version of The Simpsons, played up this theme in many episodes. The Lawnmower Man, a film that grossly corrupted Stephen King’s rather gruesome short story, did this as well. And Star Trek played this idea up with its holodeck, with several trivial characters becoming obsessed with the possibilities.

The lack of separation

But, when I look at these predictions and I look at contemporary uses of the Internet and virtual realities, I don’t see this sharp divide. I don’t see people becoming obsessed with virtual reality and completely neglect “normal” reality. Rather, the two have blended into a kind of hybrid where virtual lives and “real” ones are extensions of each other.

A second ago I mentioned Second Life. As it was originally envisioned, Second Life was a world completely separate from First Life – a world where you can create a second you. But what has happened is a marked intrusion of our first lives into our second. People are using Second Life as a realm to enhance their first ones, as businesses host job fairs there, college instructors hold class sessions there, and Texas Tech’s Distance Education program invests $10,000 on their Second Life island.

But I think our definition of what virtual reality is has changed. We no longer operate with the concept of creating entirely separate worlds whose inhabitants are entirely virtual. Instead, we create realities in which the inhabitants are quite obviously from “normal” reality. YouTube and Facebook are perhaps the two most obvious examples to me.

YouTube

When I say YouTube, I mean YouTube stars, those people starring in viral videos that garner 1 million plus hits in a matter of weeks if not days. David after Dentist is an easy example. I’d try to list others, but they’d be out of date by the time I hit “publish” on this post. I argue that David after Dentist exists in a virtual world. I will never meet him. He will never go over to my niece’s house to play. David after Dentist will never have any role in my “normal” reality. However, I can watch him and chat with friends about his silliness in a virtual context – a context mediated entirely by digital technologies that exists only in bits of ones and zeros on a Google server somewhere.

But David after Dentist is a real person. The kid is not a CGI creation, or an avatar created by his father. He has a “normal” life in addition to his virtual one. I remember reading somewhere about the paparazzi going after these YouTube stars with about the same fervor as they go after Brangelina and the like. David after Dentist’s virtual world is impacting his “normal” one. The two are being blended.

Facebook

And then, there’s Facebook. This is perhaps the place where our virtual lives collide the most violently with our “normal” ones. When the typical person first creates that Facebook profile, she goes out and friend requests all of those people who play prominent roles in her “normal” life. That would be parents, children, close friends, and extended family. That Facebook friend circle then starts expanding to former classmates, coworkers, acquaintances, and close friends of close friends. Pretty soon, if the person really becomes a “Facebook whore,” the friend circle includes people she has never physically met and most likely never will. That is, she has developed a solely virtual relationship with people through Facebook. But that virtual one is intimately tied to the “normal” one.

Gaming

Now, gaming in its contemporary context is a much more complicated endeavor. Modern video games really are virtual worlds. World of Warcraft is a fundamentally virtual reality complete with its one laws of physics, societies, and political intrigue. Halo 3 and its various cousins have the ability to develop relationships with people from around the globe whom you will never meet outside of the game context.

But both of these and all of the games similar to them have developed online support communities. Players have put together full blown websites with all the amenities that are specifically designed to let them collaborate on game plots and strategies. And the people who participate in these communities are often a blend of their “normal” identities and their in-game ones.

Where do we go from here?

So, this is the direction the next few posts will be taking. I’m going to explore each of these areas a bit more, as I see each of them having their own unique impact on how we think of virtual reality.

But suffice it to say that I see the concept of virtual reality as markedly different than predicted. Rather than a separate reality completely severed from the “normal” one, it’s intimately tied to it. Our virtual lives are extensions of our “normal” ones. And, more and more commonly, our “normal” lives are extensions of our virtual ones.

Suffice it to say, this series of posts most definitely deserves the tagline:

May you live in interesting times.

Edit: Subsequent posts
Part 2: What it used to be