Building Resilient Futures in the Virtual Everyday

Virtual Worlds and the Social Resilience of Teens During Covid-19

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5948629
AutoresJulian Gopffarth (0000-0002-1128-4710, Stripe Partners, autor de correspondencia), Rebecca Jablonsky (0000-0003-3109-5447, Google (United States)), Catherine Richardson (0000-0003-1339-8188, Stripe Partners)
Año2022
Volumen2022
Número1
Páginas117-136
Fecha de publicación2022-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEthnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (CONFERENCE)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1559-890X • E-ISSN: 1559-8918
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/epic.12109
OpenAlexW4313262003
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas26

Virtual worlds have been central to an imagined future in which advances in technology propel new social practices. The recent focus within the technology industry on the "metaverse" is the latest iteration of imagined, utopian virtual worlds which have continually surfaced in literature, film, product development, and more since the 1960s. One might say that the concept of virtual worlds is resilient-but do these proposed virtual worlds actually make society more resilient? We argue that despite their endurance, these concepts present a deterministic vision of a singular future towards which humanity is inevitably progressing, revoking the agency, desires and resilience expressed by people today in their everyday realities. Building on original ethnographic research conducted with 31 teenagers in China, Germany and the US as well as past anthropological work on using ethnography to anticipate the future and teenage online practices, this paper conceptualizes resilience as present-day creative adaptations which propel people into more desirable futures. Virtual worlds emerge as multilayered and equiprimordial spaces for the building of social worlds, giving teenagers novel tools to build and augment their social resilience

Agency (philosophy · Avatar · Business · Ethnography · Futures contract · Human–computer interaction · Humanity · Metaverse · Political science · Psychological resilience · Resilience (materials science · Social science · Social worlds · Sociology · Virtual reality · Anthropology · Computer Science · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Mosquito-borne diseases and control · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Psychology · Social Psychology