Home Sweet Virtual Village

I can’t begin to do justice to any detailed explanation of just what the heck the metaverse is. But this sort of limitation has never stopped me. I’m absolutely sparkling with energy whenever anyone mentions virtual worlds. We’ve had virtual worlds inside our heads since the evolution of the capacity for language. We live in worlds that we create in our heads. We build worlds from input from eyes, ears, interaction with others, and our own understanding of the world. It is that understanding that is so crucial to really “getting” the concept of virtual worlds.

Just think about how a single bit of knowledge can shift everything in our “real world.” While I have many difficulties with the reasoning behind such actions in this example, I think most contemporary women in the western world can completely understand how the knowledge of an affair by a husband or life partner changes everything. Most women cannot view anything through the same lens once an affair is disclosed.

Similarly the mind’s eye is shaped by our understanding of it. Knowing that our reality isn’t real, as in immutable, changes everything. A new world is evolving. The created world that each of us has in our head can not in the foreseeable future be shared, but mutual realities beyond what we share with our families and most intimate friends began in earnest with oral traditions that contained epic tales. This aspect of shared reality enjoyed another burst of punctuated evolution when fictionalized worlds created by writers climbed the various rungs of shared cultural fictions (drama – think Shakespeare, novels – think Dickens, broadcast media – radio, movies, television, internet.) And now we are coming into the another phase of internet media and one that very well may indicate a change in kind and not just quantity – one that allows vast communally development of ideas outside of the physical world. Single novels each created by thousands of people. Vast networks of women providing direct markets to other women and bypassing the male constrained economic and political systems that may limit their access traditional forms of capital resources and mobility but not their creativity and drive to innovation.

I see organizations that work with global women’s concerns and I see non-profits that help women’s organizations, but most of these seem to mirror the male conceptualizations of hierarchy, corporate structure and hyper-territoriality.

I want to find out what women can do if they build community based on their conceptualizations. The endeavor that I’m undertaking is not only for feminists, communists, anarchists, lesbians or any other stereotype that is often associated with uppity women. What would a women-oriented, women-conceptualized network look like? What would it do? How would it do it? Why would it do it? The only answer I have is that I can provide one node in the answer to “Where would it do it?”

My answer, "here."


-- first draft written in Jan. 2010 on another one of my blogs

Gonna March, Gonna Dance!

The think I like about women's activism is that it is like a bouncy session on a trampoline.  I visualize it as women standing on a web or net that overlays a map of the country or globe.  As a woman here or there becomes less active and sinks to a less active level, other raise up, and some are just bouncing like mad up to sky in near manic activity.

Women's networks are amazing!

I'm going back to D.C. for a few days, the first time in almost three years, to catch up with all things PINK at the national level and to represent my family and friends in the OneNation March in D.C. on October 2nd.

 

We all do what we can, and I have to tell the current admin that we are demanding the change for which we voted and worked.  Drones are criminal. War is not the answer to anything. Education and jobs and taking care of people are what we need -- NOT corporate and mega-wealthy tax breaks and propping up the military industrial complex.  Jobs from war funding are tainted jobs.

In a way it is sort of sad as I will be missing a great Pink & Green event here in Tucson, more on that later, but I will be reporting back often from D.C. with tweets, posts, pics and more.

I will also be dancing the night away at Poets & Busboys with Alice Walker and CODEPINK supporters.

I'm staying in a hotel and if there are any snorers who don't mind bunking in a double with another snorer (major!) then contact me about rooming.   I get dibs on soaking my feet after a day of marching and dancing though!