THE REAL IN THE VIRTUAL CYBERCULTURE ON INTERNET RELAY CHAT

Abstract

'Virtual Reality' is a terminological umbrella for an assortment of technologies that are lumped together under one broad label. Internet Relay Chat (lRC) is a text¬ based virtual reality that does not involve the use of data gloves and 3-D objects. IRC communication takes place via strings of text typed in by its participants. Unlike face¬ to-face communication, IRC conversations lack nonverbal language. This lack, to some extent, is rectified by the use of paralanguage techniques. Despite the paucity of nonverbal and social cues, participants are able to engage in a variety of activities. IRC culture is essentially a culture of play and imagination, as the participants take advantage of the lack of information to fill in idealised information and images of their own. However, IRC is not merely about play. Sometimes participants learn unwittingly in the atmosphere of play and experimentation. Some leave IRC with new-found knowledge about their selves and about the social world and its workings. With the IRC experience, boundaries between the 'real' and the 'virtual' are sometimes blurred, and some participants are no longer able to view the world in terms of binary divisions of 'real' and 'unreal', 'human' and 'machine' and 'male' and 'female'.