In Chapter 1 Reed says that when dealing with digitizing cultures
we are actually dealing with two processes, “the human development of
digitizing technologies, and the human use of those technologies.” He discusses
how these are not the same thing because humans will use a tool intended for
one purpose for another very different purpose. I think this is completely
relevant to his discussion of the Internet’s effect on human sexuality in
Chapter 5. The website Second Life is a 3D virtual world created by its users
where you create an avatar and operate inside the world as that avatar. You can
also buy a viewing device for the program called the ‘Oculus Rift’ that
functions like a pair of goggles and lets you virtually exist inside Second
Life. My expert group is virtual reality so Reed’s mention of this program in
Chapter 5 caught my attention.
He talks about how 1 in 10 users of Second Life engage in
virtual sex. This is an example of using a digital tool for a purpose that it
was not originally intended. Human nature and desire drives our use of
technology. Although we create the technology, our use of that technology
shapes our culture. And by culture I mean the values and dogmas we attach to
certain behaviors or actions, such as sex. Before the Internet, sex was
considered a personal interaction, and by personal I don’t necessarily mean the
moral idea of the word where two people are in love and have discussed their
physical connection and are ready to take the next emotional and physical step
in their relationship. I use ‘personal’ in the physical sense of the word. Sex
was between one or two or more human beings in the flesh all in the same room.
With virtual realities like Second Life, teledildonics (digitally controlled
sex toys), and digital diddling (I could not stop laughing when I read that
term), people can have sexual experiences with anonymous users on the Internet.
This goes back to Clay Shirky’s claim in “Here Comes
Everybody” that when you change the way we communicate, you change society. Now
when we think about sex we have a whole other realm of sexual mediums to consider
which impacts the cultural definitions and emotions that surround the idea of
sex.
