True Life

“When the Counterculture Met the New Economy” is an interesting article that talks about the Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, or the WELL which allowed Howard Rheingold to converse “with friends and colleagues, meet new people, and over time build up relationships of startling intimacy.” As I continued to read about the WELL, everything except the text-only environment reminded me of the MTV episode of True Life: I Live Another Life On The Web.

This True Life episode follows three individuals as they spend a large amount of their time online in their virtual worlds. For this blog entry, I would like to focus on one specific individual who is portrayed in this episode. She is a young woman who is an aspiring musician that has a lot of talent, but she does not have the courage to perform in front of large crowds of people she does not know. Because of her unwillingness to step out of her comfort zone, she plays her guitar and sings into a microphone to the friends and followers she has made in her virtual world. This virtual world offers “a venue in which members of multiple geographically dispersed groups could communicate with one another and in doing so come to see themselves as members of a single social network.” Yes, I know this doesn’t sound much like the WELL because the WELL is a text-only environment, but I will discuss some similarities and why the WELL reminded me so much of the True Life Episode.

In the beginning of the article, Fred Turner states, “In this virtual community, we could connect with one another practically and emotionally and rediscover the power of cooperation, turning cooperation into a game, a way of life.” The young woman in True Life is doing exactly what Turner says because she is connecting with her friends and followers in a practical way (in her opinion at least) and she is singing and playing her guitar to express her thoughts, feelings, and emotions to her friends in this virtual world. This expression of emotion makes her feel good inside and allows her to rediscover the power of cooperation in the virtual world which she has not yet found in the real world. This control she has makes her feel powerful, comfortable, and happy which sounds like a pretty darn good way to live her life. However, as the episode progresses she is confronted be several people who tell her she needs to take a leap of faith and begin playing in front of “real people” so she gets noticed and rewarded for her musical talents. In the end, the WELL and True Life: I Live Another Life On The Web come together nicely to show the relationships between information, technology, and community.