trees are people too

After examining my real life street a little more carefully, I have been considering the differences and similarities between my real life and Second Life environments. As I mentioned in my previous post, both are constructed spaces (i.e not wild nature), and both show the relationship between space and power, the defining of public and private space and the increasing relevance of geopolitics. As Dalby points out in his paper, Environmental Geopolitics – Nature, Culture, Urbanity, by understanding the cultural categories which are defined by geopolitics, we can then garner more understanding about the culture and politics of an area. Definition, shaping and usage of space can give vital clues into understanding other cultural aspects of a community.

In real life we have worked hard to subdivide, control and shape the wildness of nature into spaces we can maintain, access and utilise for our own purposes. This in turn has aided the division between nature and our own artificially created spaces, and this application of orderliness has been applied consistently by humans to their real life environment over history. As Dalby notes, ‘the urban aesthetic of orderliness and the necessity to civilise wilderness have had…powerful manifestations in recent history’, even at the cost of the natural environment. As humans, we seem intent on recreating our environment to adhere to our cultural and spatial desires.

Nowhere better to do this, then, than in a virtual world. But with the ability to terraform, shape and build, potentially without the limitations imposed by real life such as cost, building permits, time and expertise, geopolitics in Second Life seems to evolve in a completely different way – almost backwards. Every individual has the opportunity to shape and define their space to their liking, starting from scratch. Hence we have a whole lot of incredibly messy, unrefined, unplanned (dare I say) environments, but also some outstanding ones, possible only in a virtual world free from the contstraints listed above.

One might consider the effects of globalisation in real life, the merging of spaces and spatial identities, as a reflection of the happenings of Second Life. Second Life creates an environment devoid of ‘the obvious distinctions between local and distant, large and small, us and them’ (Dalby, pg 501). The conventional physical and economical spatial boundaries we are accustomed to dissapear in a virtual world where land is essentially limitless and its value is not determined by the resources it houses or how developed it is. Globalisation points towards the idea of a global village, and this exactly the concept we are witnessing in SL.

So if space equates to power in Real Life, what does space mean in Second Life? As culture and nature become more matters of geopolitics and spatiality, Second Life provides the perfect place to play out a kind of spatial democracy. While in Real Life the powerful – i.e. those that make the political and economic decisions – are effectively redesigning the planet, Second Life allows us all to.

So… what does this mean for my laneway? It can be whatever I want, hold whatever I want and be shaped in the space exactly as I see fit. I can control virtually any aspect of it, including who can enter it, what time of day it is and what might be lying around. It allows me to reflect on the urban culture of my street and redefine it, increasingly understanding the environment and space as I go. And, as again noted by Dalby in reference to science fiction, this make-believe environment is extremely effective in facilitating a ‘critique of the ontological categories of modern culture, and in the process raises questions of how to rethink environmental geopolitics’.

I am starting to realise just how isolated our lives, contained within these constructed spaces, really are.


Photo: Lonely street, courtesy of Bondidwhat on Flickr.