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1
Getting Somewhere with Reality and Virtuality
Sarah Green Department of Social
Anthropology University of Manchester
Ashridge Meeting, 4-5 May, 2000 Introductory
Plenary Session
2
Getting Somewhere (anywhere)

• ICTs where we are going
• The Connection Imperative if you dont
  connect, you dont get anywhere.
• Connection to a network of connections .

3
Connecting the World in a Web Now
4
And Then
Solving longitude seen as a technological
revolution to conquer the world But the
technology was willed into existence, in the
same way as ICTs have been willed into existence.
5
So where have we got to?

• Historically and today, greater connection in
  (western) thought is associated with
• A technical fix
• Getting somewhere and thereby progressing
• Couched in modernist terms
• Ideal escape from material constraints
• Objective progress of mind over matter
• Technology brings this about
• Yet VS? projects that where you are in the world
  still matters a great deal
• Many realities are being generated with the
  ICTs
• Contra popular opinion, ICTs are no more
  context-resistant or history-resistant than any
  other technologies

6
Reality and Virtuality

• Groupware and memory
• Email collages of reality but top execs never
  involved in email at all, so whose reality is
  being reconstructed?
• Silicon Alleys
• Real virtuality games generating contexts,
  and unflattening flat networks porous
  boundaries between play and seriousness
• Final Question
• In going places through connection, what becomes
  disconnected?