Reality Or Virtuality?

                                            Walkabout. Courtesy of Google Images.

In the aboriginal culture, ‘Songlines’ are used as a map or a direction-finder to ensure they found their way across the country. (Chatwin, 1985) It was the one of the connections that the Aboriginals had used to understand their identity, their culture, their history and this assisted them throughout their lives. It was also a source of communication, say if one were to venture of their trail and come across other people he would sing his song and that song will tell that other person that he means no harm and lead him back to his path. Facebook has a similar concept to ‘Songlines’.

An individual would know their history or identity just by going on their ‘wall’. On a Facebook wall which you and your Facebook friends can access has the basic information about that particular person, it has an album of photo’s that the person ‘uploaded’ or  had been ‘tagged’ in creating their identity or just by ‘scrolling’ down on the wall, it would show the history from when this person started using Facebook. That would include; status updates, uploaded photos, tags even things that person has ‘liked’. And we cannot forget that Facebook is the biggest source used for communication.

Discussed in Week 5’s Lecture, was the term ‘ontology’ – a systematic theory of existence; a way of explaining and making sense of god and everything in life. Facebook and Songlines are based around that term. Facebook is virtuality; a type of narrative that will only identify you in your virtual space. You could walk around public and people would not know your history, or what you recently uploaded or even know your name. However, that’s the difference between the virtuality of Facebook and the reality of Songlines. An Aboriginal man could sing a song and the others would know where he comes from even though they’ve never met him before.

This link discusses the opinion from the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg about Facebooks virtuality becoming a reality in today’s society.  http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/29/9069675/mark-zuckerberg-says-virtual-reality-is-the-obvious-next-step-for

By Korissa Johnson.

Reference

Chatwin, B. (1987) The Songlines: Ausralian Aborigines – Social Life and Customs. Pp. (2) Published by British Library Cataloguing.

Kuttainen, V. (2015). Stories and Places. Lecture, James Cook University

The Verge. Last updated ( 2015). Retrieved from URL. http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/29/9069675/mark-zuckerberg-says-virtual-reality-is-the-obvious-next-step-for

Walkabout Image. (2015) Retrieved from URL. http://eastaste.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/walkabout1.jpeg