Transformation of Social Relations
There are several ways in which the social can be introduced to the virtual space, such as through spatial creation or “immaterial labor.” According to anthropologist Nick Dyer-Witheford, immaterial labor is a new kind of work that “creates ‘immaterial products’ such as ‘knowledge, information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional response’” (2009, 4). In virtual settings focused on play, such as in online virtual worlds, immaterial labor can take the form of modding, where video game modification developers, or “modders,” contribute to the meanings and possibilities of the virtual through co-creation and collaboration. In these instances, modding is used to enhance and improve the virtual space by reinventing it and opening it up to new social relations.
When the simulated space is produced within real, physical spaces, such as when simulations are created to aid the military, the technical machine becomes part of the social machine through the social input of the people involved, thereby giving rise to dynamic virtual spaces. Interestingly, within the social machine, powerful social relations can be both facilitated and undermined in a socially immersive environment, which can produce palpable effects in the real world. Specifically, there may be something in the virtual space that overpowers the real within the simulation of the real, which is able to produce meaningful consequences in the real world.
In addition, the technical machine can be contained and implanted within the human machine to produce the larger social, fleshy machine that allows social relations to be produced and facilitated. When this occurs, the technical machine and human machine do together what they would otherwise be unable to do on their own. Through the emergence of these social possibilities, social relations can be created through participation in other virtual or real spaces. Indeed, the collision of the technical machine and the human machine creates a greater, unified social machine through which social possibilities are realized.
Interestingly, the human machine is also able to control and manipulate certain human interactions, thereby perpetuating racism and racial difference as Stephanie describes here. In an attempt to accrue power, the human machine controls social interactions to create and utilize new, greater social machines.
Citations:
Guattari, Félix. "Machinic heterogenesis." In Chaosmosis: an aethico-aesthetic paradigm (1995): 33-57.
Dyer-Witheford, Nick. Games of Empires (2009).