Virtualization of the life-world

Abstract

The diffusion of technological artifacts, in particular, devices of communication and the Internet have transformed the life-world of essentially everyone living in a modern society. In the past few years our everyday, including livelihoods, has seen a proliferation of activities within virtual worlds, such as games and virtual social networks. We can now live and experience actively in different virtual realms, as compared to being mere passive receivers in the era of television and radio. This has direct implications in what is inherently relevant for people and, in consequence, we have to take such transformation in account also in conceptual terms. The main implication to the conceptual palette of phenomenological sociology is that due to virtualization, we can no more equate the paramount reality as the zone of primary relevance. The paramount reality as conceived as the sensorily perceivable, physical world of concrete objects is increasingly far from being equated to the zone of primary relevance; that part of the world within our reach which we can immediately observe and also at least partially dominate. It is furthermore argued that the ongoing virtualization of societies urges us to conceive virtual worlds as transforming the subuniverse of the world of working instead of seeing virtual worlds merely as other finite provinces of meaning. Based on Alfred Schütz's work, this essay conceptually scrutinizes virtual worlds with an aim to clarify what is at stake with the virtualization of the modern society.

Being Together, Worlds Apart: A Virtual-Worldly Phenomenology

“…If we make the proposed extension of Schutz' account, we endorse a multiplicity of lived social worlds: the one everyday life-world, and many virtual life-worlds all with equal potential for experienced "reality." This is distinct from the position Ollinaho (2018) recently takes in his application of Schutz to understanding how virtual worlds are becoming woven into the everyday life-world. He says that through virtualization, "another zone of primary relevance other than that of 'here and now' has been erected and has become a part of the life-world of normal persons engaged in the world of daily life" (ibid., p.4, our emph.).…”

Incomegetting and Environmental Degradation

“…The processes of commodification and technologization of human activity have led people all over the world to adopt-to varying extents-technological devices as a part of their everyday life with which they "gear into" reality [101]. The technologization of human action makes it hard to engage in forms of action that do not have environmental impacts: we would, in the industrialized world, find it hard to give birth to a baby without relying on an extensive healthcare infrastructure that presupposes massive healthcare industries, energy systems, educational structures and so on, to give just one example.…”

“…It is not only that a thick layer of machines and other people-our linkages are socially as well as technologically mediated [2,21,31]-separates us and the "natural" environment, but also that the virtualization of life-worlds makes people "likely to become still less connected with the real world" [102], which is where environmental changes actually take place. In place of face-to-face situations, we increasingly "gear into the outer world" [15] (p. 227) through our technological devices, such as laptops and smartphones, and people also increasingly "gear into" other realities-into virtual realms [101]. While the direct corporeal experience is increasingly that of perceiving audio-visual material, tapping and sitting, the actual content of experience within these virtual worlds can be nearly anything and has induced new types of social relations [103].…”

The Newest Virtualization Trends: From The Future To The Post-Future

“…While analyzing this dichotomy some theorists repelled from virtual reality and understood virtualization as computerization of society, increasing influence of computer technique on human life (Buhl, 1997;Kroker, 1994). Other theorists took the "real" category as a starting point and considered virtualization as a growing virtualization of real social processes (Ivanov, 2000) or of the individual's life world (Ollinaho, 2018).…”