The technological era is upon us. It is no longer the information revolution, nor the age of media transcription. These phases have passed by us as clout filled with socially distinct divisions. In this era one either has it or doesn't. The realm of computerization is upon us in a furor that even Alvin Tofler would be frightened by. Tofler is most noted for his sociological works Future Shock, Third Wave, and Power Shift, which describe the alteration of society due to the inevitability of change from technological and information advancement.

Tofler encouraged us, as a society to comprehend the pathological state at which technology and information would cataclysmically alter what we know of society. Information has become the monetary sum and force behind power. Tofler stresses that human society was exhibiting a rate of change to which few would be willing and able to adapt; the remaining persons would curtail into a post-electronic age of insipid neo-luddism or be faced with abrasive social and psychological conflict: society would continue to change ever rapidly while the populace is abandoned within the wake. According to Future Shock, there they would remain as out-groups, trying to cope with an ever-present society steeply differentiated.

For those persons who do prevail, society as a whole would largely be ignored in their wayward activities, with the exception of advertisers and market media representatives. The denizens of this "technopoly" would relinquish their expressions and social contracts that bind them to the old world. These denizens don PDAs, cell phones, and alpha-numeric pagers, keeping them constantly wired to a transient world promoting technological advancement. The advancement subsequently has been established as mass communications (information), production (consumption), trends (ideology), and sponsorships (religion).

The identification of the individual has been transposed between two levels: the metaphysical (sacred) and concrete (profane). It is an expanding positive feedback system, personified as if each broadcasts its intentions upon the denizens so that they may further the other—a push and pull structure. People purchase the goods that promote the production, feeding the industry with reserve to provide monies to be used in modification and advancement within its own sector. Advertising contributes to the information-rich media streams readily being fed to those who are attune to every level of information available. The customers are encapsulated within the circle. The products provide identities by which the individual may associate him- or herself to others and find associations for themselves. Information provides the ideas, the products, and the social realms. We had our next generation Pepsi drinkers and our children who think differently about Apple computers. The materials themselves become a value orientation that individuals can grasp as a concept of social identification. The geeks present themselves as neo-luddites and retro-hippies. Marketers in khaki pants and polo shirts that boast their company logo; they attune themselves to the next sale with attached cell phones and pagers. There is a guise of ideology presented via the products with which people are armed. Each person upholding a belief structure in par with the company where they work. One can perceive the network technician, or the open source programmer. This is the era of the dot-comers, the established world of e-identity or i-character.

Imbedded within the technological character is the real-life (RL) identity, represented in the perceivable, tangible real world, and a virtual identity, represented by aliases of associations (e.g., Condor, Phiber Optik, Cap'n Crunch). These aliases were the bind the individuals had to a self-actualized character. The common technological denizen no longer abides by netiquette, references an alias, nor is an established net-savant. The technological era has doomed these identities to deviants associated as hackers, crackers and phreakers. One now conducts ritualistic activities in the virtual world as if it is RL.

Social identity within the virtual society is based upon the key foundations of the physical world, law, principle, and construct. The physical world is the theme of the virtual society created by developers of software for the virtual community. The physical world is the parameters of existence. Just as natural, physical law exists in RL. Law is a term for the conditions by which the character within the community must abide. A virtual world may have a User Software License Agreement (USLA) that specifies terms and conditions by which the user must abide in order to use the software. The law is structured similarly to the modem legal system of policing, judging, and restitution. Principle exists esoterically in the virtual society for there are no regulations that one must speak and act in a specific manner or role play; rather, the communities react to individuals by their behavior—simulating RL social interactions. Appearances too are important in the virtual world as they are in RL. Constructs are the basic foundations analogous to the biological predisposition of availability with which human beings are born. Such that trolls are larger, elves age to be rather old, and both are natural enemies of each other.

A character structure of anonymity similar to the Internet's chat exchanges is created in today's Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). Anyone may manipulate a persona to be identified as an RL mirror, or that of fantasy, imagination. The personas exist without reality's adversities. The social exchange exists within the mentioned anonymous structure as well as the ability for the individual to log out—exit the simulation—at any time. There are no obligations except for those the user creates, whereas in RL persons cannot choose not to exist nor effectively continue socially without regard for their social identity.

Within the virtual world individuals role-play their personas. This role-playing emulates an idealized form of action by the dramatist, actor. The audience is acutely aware of the individual's perceived characteristics by notion of clothing, profession, and racial attributes within the virtual world. The performance creates nuances of speech through methods of typing. The actions are perceived by the audience, as are the inactions. In totality the audience is fully aware of the actor, as one would be in RL, but the perception is incomplete in two manners of sincerity: the backstage and the hidden performance. The backstage is noted as the conscious level of personal exchange, or intimate relations. No audience member within the virtual world can overcome the medium and so the medium becomes a blind where only shadows represent the action and the audience must make a judgment on the value of sincerity performed.

Cases exist where individuals used the medium of the anonymous Internet to represent themselves seemingly sincere, but quite the opposite. They were fictitious characters generating sincere responses from a fooled audience. The hidden performance is an interaction where the performer is no longer aware that he or she is entering the backstage; information flows freely though the performer, who is amiss to the notion that a transgression from the game world's social simulation is no longer a simulation. The actor has lost touch with the divide between the virtual role and the RL role. The virtual character is not a fictitious being, but rather the idealized version of the human character. Here the actor is able to live out the fantasies of reality via intimate conversations of true sincerity.

The presentation of the self exists in reality as performances, but many of these performances are marred and hindered by judgment and social obligations from external laws and obligation that may appear immutable. The friction that is caused exerts itself when people may no longer believe they can be themselves or be who they wish themselves to be. The virtual society allows for self-conception and a choice of guise. This benign, distinct presence has attracted a multitude of technological era denizens into a functional, virtual, social construct.

With the attraction of the virtual society, RL society may be admitting failures in its ability to recognize the individual and the individual's desires. The technological era—technopoly—may be at fault. It maintains itself for the production and advancement of technology, but not of the human self.

Copyright © 2001 vincent gaunt. All Rights Reserved.