Walden III: Digital Utopianism and the Virtual World
Digital utopianism has long herald the rise of the virtual world, a mythical place that would theoretically eliminate the ills of meat space, identity and class inequality in particular. In recent years, what was once an idea (sometimes loosely executed) has become a reality, with people all over the globe signing on and living in, specifically to Second Life. With the rise of the virtual world in our midst, how then has it performed in relation to its philosophical lineage? To specify the question further, how does it function in terms of its cross-cltural pervasiveness?
Walden III is an attempt to understand and further these questions. Based in both International Relations and Digital Communications theory, Walden III attempts to understand whether virtual worlds can overcome the confines of cultural imperialism, providing global citizens a new arena for identity creation and cultural exchange, or fall into the same trappings of traditional Westernization.
Creator Bio
Cameron Parkins is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, He will be graduating in May 2008 with a BA in International Relations and a minor in Cinema-Television: Critical Studies.
Beyond his academic pursuits in global politics and film studies, Cameron has taken a keen interest in copyright law, specifically in relation to new methods of thinking regarding digital technologies. For the past 6 months he has worked as a Cultural Program Assistant at Creative Commons, a San Francisco based non-profit that works on progressive approaches copyright.
Outside of this, Cameron also is an active musician and blogger, posting new music and opinions to www.superhumanoids.com, a group he plays in with his close friends.
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