Gorkem Ozbek

SymbSys 205

Spring 2005

Commentary on Week 8

Simulating Ourselves

There is a kind of social simulation concerning online communities that we hardly ever discussed in class. By online communities I am referring to Web services like “friendster.com” or, what appears to be the most recent craze on college campuses across the nation, “thefacebook.com” where individuals can create profiles that represent them and, through these cyber-identities, interact with other individuals on their “social” network. At a first glance it could be difficult to see how these online communities are relevant to the topic of social simulation. As I shall explain, however, such services create platforms where real people can “imitate” their personalities in the form of an “online profile” and then go on to simulate their social lives online.

Take “facebook.com” for example. Even a quick skim through the profiles of Stanford students on this online community will reveal that each of these profiles is a finely-crafted work of imagination and creativity. In fact, in some cases, these profiles tend to represent people who may be quite unlike their creators. The possibilities are endless: a few white lies in the “about me” box and your profile can end up with an identity of its own. The assumption “thefacebook” is, of course, that the owners of these profiles know each other in non-cybernetic life. However, the next step is hardly a great leap. Indeed some online communities, more specifically online dating services, are built on the premise that most members do not actually know each other in person. The fascinating fact is that this seems sufficient for the profiles to exist independently of their owners and interact with other similarly cybernetic beings, creating a world of social interactions that, while based on actual people and their lives, go beyond merely replicating real-life networks.

Still, it is important to consider whether online communities can be considered simulations. One problem seems to be that of autonomy: unlike the kinds of simulations we discussed in class, online communities cannot just grow and continue to exist without intervention from the profile owners. The cyber-identity remains a puppet to the actual person in the end. However, this may not be as significant a problem as we may find it at first. When profile owners manipulate their cyber-identities’ interactions via, for example, sending messages to other cyber-identities, they still do so with respect to the personalities that represent them on the Web. The simulator’s agency is required, but on the surface it is the network of these cyber-identities, at times distorted beyond any resemblance to their creators, that create the dynamic which becomes the simulation.