Week 7—Automediality

What happens when you combine a personal profile with multimedia? Welcome to the world of automediality, a term that at the very least has this essay’s word processor scratching its head over the spelling—get with the times!

If this child of the universe has learned anything about university, it is that academics like to ‘unpack’ a subject as a way of clarifying its meaning. In a proletarian world, the same principle might be similar to dismantling a car’s engine to see what makes it tick. Collectively, either of the aforementioned methods are a process of investigation to garner greater understanding.

By unpacking the term ‘automediality’ we begin by looking at its prefix, auto. According to the ancient Greeks, ‘auto’ means ‘self’. To contextualise this term for the purpose of clarity, when we append the word ‘biography’, instantly a flood of meaning is unleashed as a torrent of insightfulness bears light on what is otherwise darkness, just as easily as flicking on a switch. Dancing, too, is easy when you know how, ‘you just need someone to lead and take it slow’ (Jackson, 2004).

Next, we segue into the term of ‘mediality’—and again my auto correct alerts me to further miscreant spelling-behaviour. This term is a composite and ‘media’ and upon further investigation it turns out two suffixes, -l and –ity which when combined construct a new word not unlike how the hyphen-dash turns two words into a kind of bastardised-designation. Breaking it down further we end up with the word media, which, according to the archaic act of opening up a dictionary proclaims: ‘the main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the Internet) regarded collectively.’  

By this point in our analysis of ‘automediality’ it is hoped that without too much of a leap of faith an image is starting to take shape in our minds. Furthermore, if we add a dose of remediation it should start to become clear that automediality has something to do with sharing a person’s self via a public medium. The digital world in which we quite often find ourselves interacting in can vary greatly, from posting on traditional bulletin board forums, to exploring digitally recreated worlds using virtual reality (VR) technology.

One such online VR game, Second Life (Lab, 2003), approaches the idea of creating an online persona a little differently. This game offers a player an alternative to the usual and rather hackneyed game play of loading up a favourite PC FPS (first person shooter), Sim, or RTS (real-time strategy) computer game. The latter games can tend to get a little repetitive after a while with their pre-programmed, often linear missions. However, Second Life offers players a different way of interacting with other users, in real time, in a world of digital reality.

Many people would probably think that playing a game that emulates real life is like taking their work home with them. That is of course assuming the person has a job, or even a life that many consider emblematic. What it doesn’t take in to account are the people that would love to have a job, or a ‘normal’ life. Not everyone is blessed with such things as these. Take for example 30 year old Cody, whose life 29 years earlier was fundamentally changed forever. The game Second Life offers Cody a way of perceived living that most take for granted. In fact when I watched the video Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is Me, the part containing the story of what happened to Cody spared little detail on how at the age of 1 he decided to go for an unsupervised swim in his family’s swimming pool; the problem was that Cody did not know how to swim! Included in the video is a digital recreation of young Cody submerged and lying at the bottom of the pool, face up, motionless, being starved of oxygen. I have to admit that by viewing that image brought tears to my eyes; it's also very likely an image that will be repeated in numerous untold future nightmares. I wish I’d been warned about what to expect prior to its viewing, so if anyone follows the link to the video, considered yourself gently forewarned.

Not that Cody, or anyone else with a disability, is asking for pity. They soldier on getting on with their lives in whatever form providence has dealt them. The point here is, the game Second Life opens up opportunities for self-expression, which under normal situations may not exist. It does this by offering a way to connect with other people, outside their daily existence, and it gives them a sense of belonging to something special. The result is that at the end of the day their lives are that little bit happier. Happiness should be a right—just as breathing. It should not be a commodity that gets doled out for special occasions, or only granted to those of perceived entitlement.

Change is constant. Just as soon as we get used to one technology no sooner is it superseded by something newer. The terms Transhumanism and Posthumanism are areas of future discussions that look at what it might be like when humans leave their corporeal bodies and enter into a digital reality. This blog-post can hardly begin to tackle the mechanics required to exist in such a world, let alone the philosophical, religious, and sundry ontological implications associated with such an idea. What might be interesting to note, though, is how future realities can often be traced back to earlier times where they first took shape in the minds of the creative world of the Arts. The future of automediality will indeed be varied and interesting at the very least!

Works Cited

Jackson, A. (2004). There Ya Go [Recorded by Alan Jackson] What I Do. [CD] New York, NY: Arista Records.

Lab, L. (2003). Second Life. Retrieved from Second Life: https://secondlife.com/