I.
A part of me quite enjoys it when the stutter of circumstance affords free time and there appears a space in the day not expected, and not wished for either.
Finding myself with minutes like these - bracelets chiming on a swinging arm - I enter a mode most familiar; for every Sunday for the past year and possibly much longer, I have ventured to organise and reorganise, and to make good use of the superfluous seconds available to me, in order to do whatever needs to be done.
Today however, instead of the washing, the ironing, or even the cleaning, which I do enjoy at times, I set about to do a little bit of maintenance/upgrade work in the cyber realm; to refine and develop my avatar.
Oddly enough, had it not been for this morning’s flight cancellation, and all the gifts of mundane, mall trotting hours that it gave me, I would have been, at this precise moment, listening to a talk by Bruce Damer titled:
“TERENCE MCKENNA’S ELVES, ECKHART TOLLE’S EGOS, AND BRUCE DAMER’S AVATARS: NEW TOOLS TO FORGE OR FOREGO A NEW EARTH."
Quite a title, I’m sure you’d agree! But what does it mean? What is an avatar? Why does it matter?
My dictionary app defines it thusly:
av·a·tar [av-uh-tahr] -noun
- Hindu Myth. The descent of a deity to the earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape; the incarnation of a god.
- An embodiment or personification, as of a principle, attitude, or view of life.
- Computers. A graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.
These are three seemingly similar ideas - being concerned with appearances - yet contrasting…
- Something to do with God.
- Something to do with the personality.
- Something to do with computers.
Not an instantly reconcilable group of concepts, but given a volume or two, I’m quite sure I could flesh it out. However, the journey further down that path is for another time. Perhaps another airport. In the meantime, it is worth noting that this dictionary definition ‘rhymes’ well with Bruce Damer’s title. Consider it carefully.
II.
The avatar I spent the day dressing was of course, the ‘computer’ one. It is however, not just an image. It’s an organism. I like to think of it as the mushroom on the mycelia, the fruiting body of a hidden network. It, like everything else in this universe, is made ‘real’ by its density of connection, and the depth and perspective it gives the person interacting with it.
Just for example (if you didn’t already know) a quick glance at my Facebook page would tell you that I’ve been in Amsterdam for two weeks, that there were ducks outside my tent, and I have a thing for crop circles. Then you could view any of the comments on my page and discern a great deal about my social interactions, my perspectives and those of the people around me in cyberspace. This is knowledge indeed.
An avatar used to just be an image, and maybe a few details too: “Kylie, 13, wants a ‘real’ man” or “David, 15, hates school, loves skating.” Our avatar is now so much more. It is our ‘social graph’. It is the fine line between our privacy, our willingness to be open, and our willingness to be exploited.
It is the latter of these concerns that has driven me to expand away from Facebook somewhat, and looking to the next frontier in the dissolution of our cultural pedantry. So I signed up to LinkedIn, which allows for a professional online presence, and for Tumblr which allows for many differing styles of blogging, through audio, video, text and photo.
Hopefully I’ll be able to integrate these into the avatar I maintain in the cyber realm… Myself, as I imagine myself to be. Myself, as I have created myself. The embodiment of my being in a sea of silicon signals, my ego in it’s mirror, and my image carefully defined and controlled by me, for my convenience.
Although this leads me to what is just a passing thought, which I should try and clarify further at some point, I’ll share anyway: Social networks are symbiotic systems. A singular network with the same tools just won’t cut it. The variety of person and personality is infinite, and the network MUST be that flexible.
In many ways, this is Facebook’s strength. It allows for other sites to interact and grow with it, in whichever way suits the user. However, it still holds too much power, in its use of data for advertising purposes, and that will have to change before long. But I really do digress…
I have expanded the reach and capability of my online interactions. As a result, my avatar becomes more defined, like an eye taking shape in the sculptor’s clay. I hope that when it looks finished, it finds other permutations to keep it going. A work in progress; this is the only sane way to philosophise.
III.
It was as I left Amsterdam’s Schipol airport, 12 hours later than planned and towards a different destination, that these thoughts came to mind, as if they’d slowly floated towards me over the past two weeks. I hadn’t seen them coming, not until the moment my fingers started to type.
Sitting in my economy seat, admiring the melting magenta crevice slicing through the sky, I realised that my flight would literally be ‘chasing the sunset’. Like much of the day so far, this flight was also free time, another jangly bangle on the wrist. Throughout the day however, many of these minutes that had adorned my normal stream of temporal passage were lost to queues. Normally, the part of me that doesn’t care much for interrupted plans and airline incompetence, that clock- watching, feet-tapping neuroticisian that lurks in wait of any uncomfortable moment, would have been thoroughly ticked off. Thankfully, this mould in my cosmic cheese had been on holiday for two weeks, and was still pretty slow in kicking off during what could have been quite an impatient day. I was calm, relaxed, and still with Gaia’s flow. To be still and fluid, ever moving yet eternally rooted. This is she.
It must have been then, during the approach to Edinburgh, as the jet descended through the Rosé spattered woollen clouds, stretched and strewn over invisible wire fences, that I began to understand the metaphor and the symmetry in the situation and the circumstance of the present flowing moment.
And as we drifted down past the tiger skin sky, with each rip and ripple of dirty orange edging further from my sinking view, it came into place.
The sun set, and the flight landed. And the next chapter begun.
[POSTSCRIPT: The avatar has now become crafted within this website, resulting in the early death of several of the social media accounts.]