Photo: Allan Cedillo Lissner

Virtual interaction has become a real force to be reckoned with. The social networking site Myspace.com – now under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation – has estimated annual revenues of about $200 million, with more than 70 million users. Online romance sites fetch $500 million a year via services that range from the broadly targeted Match.com to specialty sites like GoodGenes.com – for high-earning but lonely Ivy Leaguers. Meanwhile, mmorpgs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) like World of Warcraft (with 4.5 million subscribers) and Lineage (2.2 million) rake in billions of dollars offering online fantasy universes to groups of players who pay monthly subscription fees. These games, with their potential for round-the-clock interaction, are responsible for much of the talk of “video game addiction.”

As fast as the influence of virtual communities has grown, a body of thought condemning its corrosive effects on society has sprung up as well, from both mainstream and academic sources. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, for instance, sees nothing to be amused about in a tendency towards what he calls “liquid life,” arguing that technologically mediated interaction leads to a fluid, detached relationship to real-life others. “Virtual relationships . . . set the pattern that drives out all other relationships,” Bauman laments, with reference to internet dating, “That does not make the people who surrender to them happy. You gain something, you lose something else.”

Bauman’s reflections on the poisonous effects of mediation fit into a lineage of radical, Marxist-inflected European thought, from Paul Virilio’s recent indictment of the modern obsession with informational speed, which, he argues, renders thought impossible, to Guy Debord’s apocalyptic reflections on the “society of the spectacle,” to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s withering attack on the Hollywood “culture industry” as the tool of an incipient fascist consciousness. In fact, the critique of technology is such a persistent motif in modern thought, that one has to ask the question as to what ideological function it itself serves.

One thing is certain about these critiques: The blanket condemnation of technology has little to do with authentic Marxist thought. For Marx, technological innovation was always both bound up with exploitation and alienation, and at the same time a locus of radical potential. Its character is not static, serving one interest, because technology is a product of society and society is a field split by contending interests.

Unless it takes this into account, the intellectual condemnation of technology becomes a case of tilting windmills, doing battle with abstract concepts like “liquid life” rather than a specific set of social arrangements, perpetrated by certain kinds of people, and thus soaking up radical energy that could be better directed. The gloom of this type of thought is merely the flipside of economics, which sees technical innovation as eternally benevolent.

A vaguely alarmist 2004 New York Times article by Brent Staples condemns the lure of virtual communities, arguing that teenagers who spend too much time online substitute fantasy interactions for socialization that is important to their emotional development. But it’s important to emphasize that the problem is the user, not the tool. For other groups, particularly those with comparatively few real spaces for interaction – such as divorcees – the internet often serves as a valuable conduit towards actual, committed relationships.

More importantly, in the face of ills that are authentically society-wide, blaming technology is a deflection. Even if the detached nature of virtual relationships is, as Staples argues, connected to “symptoms of loneliness and depression,” this leaves unanswered the obvious question as to what, then, the attraction is, aside from some mystical appeal of gadgetry. Is the popularity of mediated, “liquid” relationships a matter of some placeless postmodern condition? Or is it driven by concrete societal pressures having to do with life in a corporate-controlled world: the overdeveloped individualism that is a product of omnipresent consumerism; the lack of time for a real social life brought by endemic overwork; or the impatience with human flaws that stems from advertising’s degradation of sexuality.

The former of these two explanations makes for better apocalyptic pronouncements; the latter, a better starting point for political intervention. The medium may be the message, as Marshall McLuhan liked to say – but it doesn’t have the final word.

_Ben Davis is an art critic and activist living in New York.

 

COMMENTS:

I met my husband of 3 years online in a game - World of Warcaft. Some of my best friends live across the planet and we have never met in person, yet we celebrate birthdays, console one another, and communicate every week. I feel that the internet allows for the creation of meaningful and real social networks, communities, and structures. I don't feel that plugged in to a liquid life, detached from reality feeling that is alluded to by Bauman and other. When someone identifies internet socializing as something bad it reveals their lack of understanding or identification with online communities that are made up of real people.
Leilakin

I became addicted to online porn probably when I was 13. At 23, I'm still addicted. And I can't tell anyone cause I'm too embarrassed. Yet I know I am by far not alone. I've spent days at a time browsing for porn on the internet all by myself, afraid that someone else should find out. Meanwhile, my grades suffered. I've never had a real relationship with another girl. Developmentally, I am many years behind in my ability to interact with real people. Am I alone? Or is internet addiction the great silence of today?
ilya

I think that a lot of what this article is addressing has to do with a more broad concept/idea. The concept I am referring to is that of control. Liquid Life allows for a false sense of control. In games such as: W.O.W. people are allowed to control individuals. On a social network as that of myspace, people have more control over how they present themselves to others. I think that this only furthers to show the intense desire that people have to be in control of something within their life. Technology is just the vehicle by which this is more readily seen.
Abe

I think online liquid life is about the strive for perfection. People craft their image and words carefully at the personals sites and it is safer than confronting people in the real world, less uncomfortable. People want everything to be easy and safe and perfect, they can make their myspace or facebook page that way easier than they can make themselves that way.
turbo

Sorry to be controversial, but in a world where meatspace relationships and social arrangements are such that nobody knows their neighbours because of paranoia and envy not due to online processes I believe there is a levelling and ultimately socialist trend in online networking. Yes it can be addictive, but so can exercise, food and stimulants. Anything that draws likeminded people together and allows them to communicate freely on subjects of their choice in an environment where they feel comfortable should be applauded in a time when personal freedom is being eroded.
Matt

As a person who wasted literally wasted 85 days over 3 years of his life playing World of Warcraft as an escape from real life disappointment, technological escapism destroyed several very important relatinships in my life, as it replaced actual social interaction. It is however, my own fault. But this liquid love or life despite being an increadible tool of connection with numerous other communities and individuals who otherwise would have no contact, poses a danger to social behaviour and one's ability to interact and deal with the real world. This does mean that techonological societies such as Massive Multiplayer Online games are terrible, but they do pose serious dangers, which need serious answers. As in my case, a certain amount of escapism isn't bad, its when it replaces your surrounding environment and replaces reality, that it becomes destructive. This dilema is just the beginning of today's techonoligical advances, and is the beginning of a systemic problem that will only grow in the near future.
Steve

Great article to read while I read Brave New World for the first time. It costs nothing to go say hey to your physical neighbour. Unless he or you is a real asshole, odds are, you won't be subjected to thirty seven different ads on the way over. You probably won't have to pay a subscription fee, either. But saying hey to your physical neighbour keeps no factories busy. exclusively online relationships can be meaningful. How does your Chinese friend's birthday cake taste, though? What's it like to walk into your Aussie friend's house? Might as well do away with your body and hardwire yourself in. I design computers by profession, and have a degree in software development, so Luddite is not an easy label to throw in my direction.
rehash

The thing for me is that virtual communication has a history. That history is rooted in the U.S. nuclear missle program, DARPA, and then progressively, these rooms filled with glowing 'microsoft blue' spread throughout our society: banks, libraries, schools, even prisons, etc. and now that glowing screen, that humancomputer interface is in our homes. In addition to that is the fact that facetoface interaction is really a mysterious, beautiful, spiritual thing where you have all of these perceptual and expressive processes going on that nourish you and teach you. These relationships are how we SURVIVE! In my opinion, we are meddling in a military, sometimes called 'cyborg' technology with some of our most vital processes with these liquid relationships. Yes, the power and the speed are exhilirating and allow us to do things our parents barely even dreamed of. I agree with Matt that there is immense paranoia, and I think that is a suburban phenomena to a large extent. I also agree with Krs, that these media are habitforming. Addiction to a closed system of information, which the web is, as opposed to say looking at a flower, is spiritually dangerous for us. Can we really afford to zone out NOW? in 2008? with all that is on the lineno pun intended?
finn

The allure to the web for me is the ability to cooperate in a/the virtual community without actually having to be at any particular place. Like this comments option for this article for instance, after writing my comment, I can visit other sites, go pay attention to actual reality, or do just about anything but and not excluding hang out on this page and wait for someone else to comment after me. But I am still part of the conversation, so after a few hours or the next time I am on the net, I can check up on this page and read up on the conversation that is taking place by way of proxy and over time, amended. I do spend a lot of time on the net, but I try to use it like any other tool; an extention of my 'self'.
TiM

Part of this ongoing problem with this so-called liquid life is that we are not offering classes to educate our children committed to the concepts of responsible Internet usage. Parents nowadays are catching up to their kids' knowledge of the Internet. We need to start educating our kids and parents about the dangers of technology and Internet addiction/withdrawl. Priax IN, age 23.
Priax

If you stay in it for too long your mind becomes enslaved and it is impossible to plug out........Do you ever find yourself feeling aggrevated or annoyed when someone disturbs you while you are on the web....or that weird disengaged feeling you get after plugging out after long hours on the web.....it's real fool.
Krs

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