Das zweite Leben - when the virtual is as valuable as the real

In 1993 an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled The Inner Light won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. According to Wikipedia: "The award was given at the World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco. 'The Inner Light' was the first television program to be so honored since the original series Star Trek episode 'The City on the Edge of Forever' won in 1968. An interesting point of trivia - in German-speaking countries the title of this episode is 'Das zweite Leben' ('The Second Life').

I hadn't seen that episode in over decade until I happily flicked over to Sky One at 3pm yesterday. And I was just as moved then as I was when I originally saw it. In 'The Inner Light' Captain Picard's mind was possessed by a space probe launched  1,000 years previously from the dying planet Kataan by a people with nothing more to hope for than that they be remembered by somebody. Under control of the probe Picard lived a virtual lifetime as a family man among the doomed civilization. What was it about this action thin episode of the science fiction series that saw it widely acclaimed as one of the best ever? Let us digress for a moment...

When Ina O'Murchu and Gareth Stack both rave about something I know it must be worth my attention. That something was the video of a presentation by Jyri Engeström of Jaiku outlining the future of social media and networking. Jryi has a background in sociology rather than technology and his insights were as refreshingly different as you might expect. My notes from his talk are as follows -

Social sites that work are built around a core social object. Think of the social object as the reason people go on line to interact with each other and not just a random bunch of people - e.g., a date or a job. Different social objects will connect you to very different groups. Flickr turned photos into social objects. Del.icio.us used bookmarks. Amazon did it to books (and other products). MySpace has music, upfront and center. Jyri advises Rupert Murdoch not to lose sight of that fact by adding too many gimmicks and features to the periphery thus obscuring the core social object.

Once you've determined the nature of your core social object you need to define the verbs people use to act upon it - "Buy & Sell", "Play", "Share". You should package the social object to turn invitations to join the network into gifts. When you send a funny YouTube video to a friend you're sharing the gift of laughter, the emotion of joy.

This is where Jyri's presentation intersects with Susan Wu's excellent guest post to TechCrunch last week. In 'Virtual Goods: the next big business model' Wu argues that virtual objects aren't really objects at all but services, "graphical metaphors for packaging up behaviors that people are already engaging in". She continues -

"As James Hong from HotorNot tells it, his virtual flower service has 3 components: there’s the object itself represented by a graphical flower icon, there’s the gesture of someone sending the flower to their online crush, and finally, there’s the trophy effect of everyone else being able to see that you got a flower... Of the 3 components, the two that James says are most important to his users are the trophy effect and the meaning of the gesture itself. As the barriers between peoples’ online and offline selves continue to erode, this market for virtual goods is going to explode. People are going to continue to seek out ways to show real emotional engagement online."

That last sentence is the key take-away as it grounds the high tech wizardry in a core sentiment of what it means to be human. Emotional engagement. Long before we had computers we packaged emotional engagement into virtual products like poetry, song, music, theater, sculpture and art. Although the latter had physical form the value lay in the intangible - the beauty which stirred the emotions.

Emotional engagement makes us feel alive. It makes us feel worthy, a part of society. Whether it's to have our likeness painted on a canvas, to be quoted and linked to by another blogger or to know that our children will put our name on a gravestone, we need to know that we matter. Beneath 'Self-Actualization' in Maslow's hierarchy of needs are 'Esteem' and 'Love/Belonging' - the need to feel that our lives have meaning, that we've made a difference in this world, that we will be remembered. Like the people of the dying planet Kataan.

In the final scene of 'The Inner Light' Jean Luc Picard is given a flute which has been recovered from the space probe after releasing his consciousness back to his physical body. In a poignant moment he hugs the flute dearly to his chest, the musical instrument he had spent a virtual lifetime mastering. This was his trophy, a gesture from the people of Kataan who would now live on only in his memory. The flute was a simple wooden artifact, but the lifetime of memories and emotions it represented, or packaged, was priceless.

The irony was that Picard had spent his first five years on Kataan clinging stubbornly to his memories of life as a Starfleet Commander. Refusing to believe that the real was virtual. Now, back on Enterprise, as he played the haunting melody he had learned among a dying civilization it was clear the he was clinging on to a virtual life that was in many ways more complete than his true life, a life with children and loving wife among a settled community of ordinary people. Was Das zweite Leben, The Second Life, any less valuable than the real?

Comments

[lexia]

Great post, James. The advent of social networking does pose the question - Are our online experiences any less relevant than face-to-face ones?

Recognition be it, through a link or a comments is IMHO just as real as someone listening to your points across the discussion table.

Sociologically speaking, I believe that we are narcissitic by nature. Artists paint to express or to understand, but also to show people their work. Blogging and the social interaction it engenders, seeks recognition also.

Seeking connections with people across the table or halfway around the world is a very human thing to do. Perception of the authenticity of this interaction lies truly at the eye of the beholder.

[James Corbett]

Thanks Lexia, good points and a great quote - "Perception of the authenticity of this interaction lies truly at the eye of the beholder." I couldn't agree more. Anyone who knocks Second Life should take a look at the video of the difference it made to the life of this disabled entrepeneur -

http://eirepreneur.blogs.com/eirepreneur/2006/11/how_a_disabled_.htm

and then tell us it's not a valid activity

[Bernie Goldbach]

Juri was handing out pickled herring alongside Leo Laporte last week and seeing his presentation helps me understand why Leo is so pumped on Jaiku.

[Gareth Stack]

Beautifully written post. The Inner Light remains my favourite ST:NG episode, I think I saw it originally at 'Time Warp', a Dublin convention in '94 or '95. Bless your geeky heart for reminding me.

I was most impressed by the status enabled N95 Java app that Jryi demoed towards the end of his video - mobile social networking is going to be so much bigger and more interesting than anyone anticipates. Who knows Apples renovated .Mac service / iPhone may be the combination to usher it in - Job's dropped a hint that he's doing something innovative with social networking, during his D interview with Bill Gates and Walt Mossberg.

Satisfying to see social scientists contribute to producing richer social applications - gives hope to all us non code monkeys!