Culture is Virtual

NEW CALEDON, 22 September — When human beings interact they create culture. Culture in physical space; culture in virtual space. Peter Farb’s marvellous book Humankind has a photograph of two prison inmates in cells next to each other, the separating wall prevents them from even seeing each other’s face, but their hands extend through the bars and meet at a deck of cards where they play a game. We humans long to interact. We intuitively, innately, inevitably, create culture.

For a century or two now, culture has not been defined by you and I hunting the same animal or plowing the same field together. Not by us sleeping within a meter or two of each other. In the modern age culture has been shared, people have been united, by newspapers, by magazines, by telephone, by radio, by television, by internet. For over a century now, culture has been created and defined by virtual media.

Now in virtual worlds we are beginning to weave new communities, free of the tyranny of geography. Even our own small Vaneeesa Blaylock / Company has featured participants on 6 of the 7 continents.

This is extraordinary.

This is the 21st century.

Culture wants to be free.

Culture is virtual.