The “Cyber Meta-effect” on the Presidental Election (Part 2)
2.) “Snowcrashing” the political system: Once again, it’s fair to bring up the concept of the avatar, which represents the online virtual body of the user or the corporation. Avatars go beyond the simple game interfaces that are found in environments such as “Second Life” and “The Sims.” Avatars are extended profiles that allow the user (or a collaboration of a group of users) to interact with the metaverse environment. Avatars allow for more than the simple rehashing of talking points or bullet points through a two-dimensional analysis of textual information. These virtual representations of the self allow for the construction of a candidate’s narrative through the leaving of “cultural artifacts.” In the novel “Snow Crash,” one of the main characters (Hiro Protagonist, the last of the freelance hacker and the greatest swordfighter in the world) express his narrative through the cultural artifacts present on his avatar (the swords showing from his belt, the fact that his avatar looks pretty much like Hiro, his use of a motorcycle in the metaverse), the methods he uses to interact with the rest of the avatars and, at the end of the novel, his performance/presentation/spectacle in front of a large virtual audience. It is through the addition of all of the perceived pieces of information that Hiro gives to his “invisible audience” that a narrative is created.
This is similar to the narratives created by the political candidates in the public sphere. However,their cultural artifacts are left in the “mediated metaverse” and are analyzed and reanalyzed from public consumption. Once the narrative is created, it become adopted into the public sphere and will be given a dominant (hegemonic or preferred) reading, a negotiated reading or an oppositional reading depending on the individual ideology. It is very hard for a candidate to distance themselves from the mediated narrative unless they chose to fight it through the creation of new cultural artifacts designed to disprove the accepted narrative and rewrite the story. As soon as the election occurs, the victorious candidate will have a chance to write the American narrative. However, their creation may come into conflict with the other narratives present in the public sphere and the candidate will have to deal with the results of the conflict.
To move away from the cyber metaissues that are present in the election, it is important to look at two platforms that have added to the blur between the world presented in “Snow Crash” and the modern political arena. The first tool at the disposal of the modern information junkie is Google Maps/Google Earth. Google Earth, for those who are not familiar with the program, is a 3-dimensionally rendered map of the Earth that individual can manipulate for the purpose of adding information that would otherwise be impossible to add. Google Maps has an entire section dealing with maps that reflect information from the political campaign. The Earth version of the program allows users to see state-by-state the projected electoral map, color coded for convenience. This program was inspired by the “Earth” program from the novel and represents a key method of organizing geographic information for political purposes.
The second platform that is present would be YouTube and the tangents that have come from the creation of YouTube. YouTube would be considered by some to be fulfilling the role of “citizen journalist” as people can now post videos from campaign events, create news stories from the road or even create debate and dialogue around key issues the campaign. These users of YouTube would essentially be the collectors of the events of the world and contributors to the common knowledge that were described as “stringers” in the novel.
