Weekend Viewing: Anthropologist Tom Boellstorff Talks Coming of Age in SL at the Chicago Humanities Festival

Last month, UC Irvine anthropology professor Tom Boellstorff (who recently became editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist) gave a mixed reality presentation on his book, Coming of Age in Second Life at the prestigious Chicago Humanities Festival. So an audience used to hearing speeches from arts and letters heavyweights like Sam Shepard got the rare treat of seeing Tom on stage while also watching his avatar presenting the same talk from within SL:

"[W]hat was so cool was the interaction between the physical-world audience in Chicago and the SL audience," Tom tells me. "There was one great moment when I was trying to explain to the Chicago audience how virtual worlds are new kinds of places with social interactions that can't be reduced to the physical-world locations of the people involved, and I asked where the SL audience was in the physical world, and they started staying 'Ohio, Poland, Sweden, California,' and so on -- it really blew people away!" The Chicago Tribune even published an article on it. It's a fun and thought-provoking talk, and Tom's a brightly engaging speaker, so set aside an hour this weekend to watch.

Comments

[Tom Boellstorff]

Thanks for the shoutout! For the past three years and for another 18 months basically (until August 2012) I'm Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. It's been a great experience and a great honor but the price has been almost no time for research or even to go into sl, much less other virtual worlds. So this was a great chance to talk about what virtual worlds are and what we can learn about them to a lay audience. The simultaneous physical-world/virtual-world aspect of it was tricky to pull off, Matt Heinrich and other folks at the Chicago Humanities Festival were awesome in making it happen!

[Matt Heinrich]

Awesome review, NWN. Thanks to you too for the shoutout, Tom, and thanks for making this such a fun event. I've said it before, and I'll say it again-- working on this event was one of my favorite projects in my career at the Chicago Humanities Festival (so far).

Hey NWN, do you think CHF should expand into Second Life? Is there an audience for hour-long talks (or footage of said talks) in Linden Land?