There is no doubt that because of the technological advances over time, people’s life experiences have changed drastically. On top of this, we were hit with a pandemic that affected everything. Our school, work, and everyday lives became very digital, and many people became only faces on a laptop screen. Digital and streaming platforms became a basis of our lives, some of which were improved and advanced significantly. How did this affect us as a whole? How did this affect the way we experience things? Flickering signifiers, which have a place in these advancements, have changed how people perceive presence and information. In the article “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers,” Katherine Hayles discusses the impact of technology on our experiences of presence and information. According to Hayles, flickering signifiers are “characterized by their tendency toward unexpected metamorphoses, attenuations, and dispersions. Flickering signifiers signal an important shift in the plate tectonics of language” (76). This concept is quite interesting, and I honestly knew that it existed but never knew the name for it (if that makes sense). A signifier or some type of symbol/idea changes constantly, depending on the situation or context of something. There are two examples that I would like to discuss that relate to the experiences of myself and others.
First, the presence of social media applications and continuously advancing phones/technological devices. I am sure it is a universal understanding that social media has undoubtedly changed our perceptions of presence and information. People create profiles on these apps, and what we see is not necessarily a “real life” human, but rather images and ideas that display who these people could be. We follow these people, converse over these apps or simply by regular messaging. Do we actually know them? Is their presence the same as if we were talking to them? In a way, we are interacting with their presence, but their presence is redefined because of the technological interactions. To follow up with Hayles’ ideas, social media and digital interactions change presence in that they “[are] founded on absence” (77). Along with this, the information we receive and process also changes because it is instantaneous. I do ask myself how have I responded to this shift, and I do not know if I can really come up with a full answer. I feel that the changes are constantly happening, and I can find it hard to adapt at times with social media and technology. The second example I would like to analyze is virtual reality and gaming platforms. I have recently been to Dave and Buster’s, and they have a new, very advanced game there that has the virtual reality component. This is something quite interesting and new for me. To be quite honest, I have played many games growing up and this is just something else! We have gone from 80’s style arcade games, to newer and advanced versions of those games, and then video games that have characters who look like actual people. Now, we have virtual reality games, which are in my opinion a little scary at first. I definitely am unsure of how to respond to this type of shift in “reality”, let alone gaming systems. One really feels like they are in a completely different environment and reality (which is the point of course). Presence completely shifts, and some people can become very immersed in virtual reality games and technologies. The “realities” one explores are the flickering signifiers, meaning that they are constantly changing and yet have no real “presence”. Moreover, the “real” in reality is absent when it is virtual. Overall, I have learned quite a lot after looking into Hayles’ ideas and will look to define my responses to these everchanging shifts in life experiences.
Hayles, N. Katherine. “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers.” October, vol. 66, 1993, pp. 69–91. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/778755. Accessed 28 July 2023.
Hi Sarah,
I thought your blog post was very insightful and thoughtful. Same as you I have had many times (still do) difficulties adapting to the continuous change and advancement of technology. On one side I feel like I am combating to not miss out on the newest technology apps, programs, and digital tools used because it is so necessary for our “lives” and especially for our jobs as teachers. I like that you mentioned how COVID-19 was a period that changed drastically the way we all responded to technology and how the pandemic reshaped science, technology, and mostly human interaction.
Virtual reality has also evolved and we have seen a revolution mostly in the video gaming industry, but also in other applications with unique features. In virtual games, it feels almost like you are in there and seeing the action directly from the game character’s eyes. Just like you had an amazing experience trying VR games at Dave and Busters, the purpose of their development is mostly to create experiences and interactions of humans. One of the games I heard my husband talk about is the one where soldiers can “experience” virtual battlefield environments as training for situations that might appear in real life. I thought that was very interesting.
I agree with you that the pandemic was a kind of watershed moment for the general public coming to grips with flickering signification on a daily level, especially as so many people began to work from home, go to school from home, and generally maintain their lives from a central computer or phone hub. I don’t think, unfortunately, that many of us have had the time to process what this all means. The motivation to move on from the pandemic period is intense. But there is so much we could be learning from it. Hayles’ work is important but her work also “shifts” depending on the examples that we try to use to explain or explore it. I often try to understand it from the work I’ve done with online learning. The idea of ATTENDANCE, for example, is one of my favorite tropes for grasping the shift from presence to information/noise. In an online course, one cannot take attendance but one can sort through the information that a person provides and sort it out from the “noise.” More value is put on contribution’s value in an online class, I think, whereas sometimes in a physical classroom, especially with younger students, physical attendance is obvious but a person’s contribution to the information shared in the course is harder to assess, except through formal assignments. During the pandemic, with zoom lectures, there was a replication of that with people occasionally logging into zoom, closing out the camera, and doing god knows what while they were nominally “present.” Later we saw fallout from this with college students who occasionally would admit they felt they learned “nothing” during 2020 as they would log into classes while scrolling through social media. As we become more attenuated to virtual environments, I think physical presence will become more meaningful in new ways. Not sure exactly how. I would love to tap into any ideas that you have about that.
I would love to hear more about how this Dave and Buster’s virtual reality game works.