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Cyberspace's Limitations, Restrictions and Constraints

Nick Huisen 10439064

Supervisor: Dr. Joyce Goggin MA Thesis:

Literary Studies: Literature and Culture – English University of Amsterdam

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgement 1

Thanks 1

Introduction 2

Limitation? Restriction? Constraint? 9

Chapter 1: Virtual Reality 13

Wealth and the Economy of Cyberspace 14

Social Restrictions and the Limitation of the Virtual Self 21 OASIS and Metaverse: Not a Safe-Haven or Space Above 27

Chapter 2: The Diamond Age 29

Enslavement through Edutainment 31

The Mouse Army 35

Constrained Device, Limited User 40

Chapter 3: The Circle 43

The Circle 44

Filtering the Real World through Cyberspace 49

Limiting Space 52

Conclusion 55

Expressing the Self 57

Disconnected 59

A Cyberspace 61

Works Cited 62

Acknowledgement

I (Nick Huisen 10439064) have read the UvA guidelines on plagiarism and acknowledge that this thesis is my own work.

Thanks

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Introduction

Recently, the concept of cyberspace has again become popular due to “the growing dominance of ‘the network’ as social space” (Nunes 4) and due to the fact that consumer versions of virtual reality technologies are currently being released.1 Therefore,

expectations of cyberspaces are at an all-time high as the promised geek Valhalla of the virtual realm is finally becoming a reality. For example, Edward Castronova wrote that

the opening of a cyberian frontier, like other frontiers, will have a very refreshing leveling effect: those whose Earth shapes expose them to brutality, stigma and insufferable limitations will find freedom and relief when they live through less stigmatized virtual shapes.2 (Castranova)

Thus, according to Daniel Punday, “recent virtual reality technology in general has fostered the belief that human reality and community are on the verge of undergoing a fundamental transformation” (Punday 196-197). Yet this belief should be tempered. Many cyberspace-enabling products are indeed still first consumer versions and therefore, while impressive to experience, they are also constrained in various ways.

Now that these technologies are on the horizon, it is instructive to examine literature in which cyberspaces play a significant role in order to see what forms fictional cyberspaces take and thus what should and should not be possible when the realm of the virtual takes a massive leap in the direction of the actual. In doing so, it becomes evident that fictional representations of cyberspaces and related technologies initially seem to mirror the real world in their enthusiasm.

The concept of cyberspace, however, brings with it the liberating promise that 1 Notably, at the time of writing the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have been released. 2 http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/

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cyberspace technologies will allow users to leave behind real life and inhabit a new space in which new paradigms may be established and acted out. Discussing cyberspace Patrick Flanagan claims that “[i]n the expansion of computer technology, possibilities have arisen” (Flanagan 116, emphasis added), David Post proudly states that “[t]he emergence of the vast informational ecosystem we call cyberspace is an event of incalculable importance in the history of human liberty” (Post 1439, emphasis added), and Daniel Punday asserts that cyberspace “seems to be a space that allows a fundamentally new and considerably freer form of social contact” (Punday 198, emphasis added) as it “seems to promise to rework fundamentally the basic conditions of human interaction” (Punday 197). Likewise, Edward Castranova writes that “those whose Earth shapes expose them to brutality, stigma and insufferable limitations will find freedom and relief when they live through less stigmatized virtual shapes” (Castranova, emphasis added).3 This optimistic

attitude about the liberating potential of cyberspace is reinforced by authors of cyberspace fiction such as Neal Stephenson who, in order to establish his fictional cyberspace in Snow Crash, emphasizes the liberty that his cyberspace allows by writing that “[y]our avatar can look any way you want it to” (Stephenson Snow Crash 33).

The notion that cyberspace is a liberating force is not surprising given that, from “the moment when the vague entity . . . magically evoked as cyberspace appeared” (Crary 73-74), it “was heralded as an unprecedented set of tools with nothing less than the power to reinvent the self and its relation to the world” (Crary 74). Hence, according to Raymond Gozzi, when “[t]he term was coined in the early 1980s by science fiction writer William Gibson” (Gozzi 219) he described cyberspace as “a frontier where latter-day cowboys rode electronic steeds through a video-game landscape, breaking into and 3 http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/

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entering the vaults of corporate computers” (Gozzi 220).

Eventually this “electronic-frontier metaphor . . . worked its way into even the discourses of academia. Thus a design professor at MIT claims that ‘Cyberspace is opening up, and the rush to claim and settle it is on’” (Adams 161). Since that time cyberspace has often been imagined as a “new final frontier humanity has to contend with” (Flanagan 122). Given that “[t]he traditional concept of frontier implies an absence of boundaries” (Adams 163) it is, therefore, not surprising that the term cyberspace “contains an ontological metaphor (a network of nodes and links can be functionally equivalent to a space; a field of opportunities for movement and interaction)” (Adams 157, emphasis added). Following directly from the development of the term, cyberspace’s liberating promise has thus been ingrained into its very concept.

Yet one should remember that “the history of technological change is a history of

changing limitations and adaptations rather than of the abolishing of constraint” (Malpas

113, emphasis original) and that therefore, whereas many fictional cyberspaces are initially depicted as a type of new frontier with endless possibilities for their users, “the claims made about the liberatory potential of [cyberspace] are mistaken” (Punday 195).

As an example, take the notion that a social cyberspace can take the form of “a theater of performed identities” (Nakamura 31). This notion emphasizes that cyberspace should, in theory, be a space where the individual is temporarily free from his or her physicality and can embody, project and “play” any identity that s/he wishes. In other words, this idea falls under the notion that cyberspace is a “technologically enabled flight from the physical” (Worthington 192) as it supports the experience and creation of potentially complex “fictions of the I” (Coetzee 75). Cyberspace is thus imagined as

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having a liberating effect where the user can be free of his or her material existence and this idea is integral to the definition of cyberspace as “[m]any critics have seen this fluidity of identity as an inherent part of the value and power of this new communal space” (Punday 194).

Yet in many narratives which include cyberspaces this “theater” (Nakamura 31) quickly falls apart as “what the computer presents remains merely a ‘presentation’” (Malpas 115) and the cyberspace user encounters “the already existing technological borders within cyberspace” (Bomse 1727) (i.e. hardware constraints or hard-coded rules in the software). Therefore, whereas initially one might think of this hypothetical cyberspace as “a theater of performed identities” (Nakamura 31), one quickly realizes that “the technology itself is much more constrained and constraining” (Malpas 112) and that this theater is fully directed.

Moreover, it is not only technological constraints which oppose the freedom of the cyberspace user but also various other “delimiters of subjectivity in cyberspace” (Worthington 207). In truth, “[w]hile . . . idealistic talk of the revolutionary potential of virtual identities dominated early writing about cyberspace, more recent critics have pointed out the ways in which a multitude of real-life biases and limitations are imported into cyberspace” (Punday 198) because, for example, our “physical bodies serve to police how a subject can maneuver in cyberspace” (Worthington 207) and how therefore

instead of the seemingly endless possibilities for the decentered subject to enact new and different personae, cyberspace seem[s] to encourage only the ‘banal identities’ suggested by Kevin Robins and Lisa Nakamura that resort, ultimately, in racist, sexist, essentialist notions of the embodied self. (Worthington 192, emphasis

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original)

In short, whereas the ideal form of a cyberspace is a free space in which the individual encounters no obstacles in experiencing who or what he or she desires, this concept often proves unrealistic in (fictional) practice. Moreover, this is only one example of the many discrepancies between cyberspaces liberating promise and its execution.

Following from the brief survey of contemporary writing on cyberspace just provided, this thesis will perform a reading of cyberspace as a limiting, restricting and constraining space rather than a liberating force. In other words, I will not ask how cyberspace can be a “technologically enabled flight from the physical” (Worthington 192) but rather argue that the fictional cyberspace “and the flesh-and-bone space of the users is a two-way street” (Bomse 1747) both materially (physical bodies and money are often important issues in both spaces) and ideologically (social norms apply in both) and that this connection has various implications that hinder fictional cyberspaces from fulfilling the liberating promise expressed in many narratives within the genre. Furthermore, whereas the focus of this thesis will be on several fictional cyberspaces I hope to also provide indications of what may be expected of real cyberspaces if they follow fictional models. In sum, I will investigate the ways in which fictional cyberspaces are limiting, restricting, constraining or liberating and ask what this means for both the role of fictional cyberspaces and for the form that actual cyberspaces might take.

In order to approach these questions and to show that, indeed, fictional cyberspaces often fail to have a liberating effect I will examine several manifestations of cyberspace. For all of these the focus will be on how these spaces only offer, and sometimes even force, “a narrow band of possible modes of interaction” (Malpas 114),

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either with the cyberspace itself or outside of it, to the characters that populate these narratives.

Therefore, in chapter one I will examine the traditional notion of cyberspace as virtual reality in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. This type of cyberspace is what most science fiction fans expect when they hear the term cyberspace and the one often heralded as having a liberating effect. This is the “theater of performed identities” (Nakamura 31) where every actor can not only play his or her role but actually experience what it is like to inhabit it. Yet, as will become clear in chapter one, that this is a virtual reality means it mirrors, in many respects, the real world of the texts and it therefore carries many of the same restrictions and (arbitrarily imposed) obstacles that an individual might encounter in the physical realm.

In chapter two I will move beyond this traditional cyberspace concept in order to ask how a cyberspace that has been wholly integrated into the real world functions by discussing Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. In this case the cyberspace user is still firmly embedded in the real world and therefore, in theory, real-world restrictions cannot be said to be a function of the cyberspace. Yet, the cyberspace in The Diamond Age is unique. Instead of only imposing restrictions on the user while in a separate cyberspace which the user needs to access, as is the case in Snow Crash and Ready Player One, this cyberspace actually breaks through by taking the form of a real-world object: a children’s book. By posing as this seemingly innocent object the book therefore forms a means by which to impose real-world restrictions on the user through cyberspace. Moreover, this cyberspace is in some ways similar to a smartphone, tablet or laptop and it therefore forms an excellent example of how these technologies and cyberspaces can become a

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restricting force.

I will then move even further away from the traditional virtual reality concept of cyberspace and move very close (if not right into) one particular contemporary cyberspace, namely: the internet. In chapter three Dave Egger’s The Circle will be examined because the novel’s titular company is a highly realistic depiction of various real-world corporations. Frighteningly, this company uses a cyberspace which is, in almost all respects, identical to the internet through which it controls its employees and, eventually, the world. This novel emphasizes “the growing dominance of ‘the network’ as social space” (Nunes 4) and the controlling potential of this space.

With this final manifestation of cyberspace I arrive at a contemporary cyberspace which proves to not only carry limitations and restrictions but also, like The Diamond

Age’s cyberspace, has the ability to impose these limitations and restrictions on

real-world society. With this final chapter, various manifestations of cyberspace will have been analyzed and this thesis will have provided an overview of several fictional cyberspaces and their failure to uphold cyberspace’s liberating promise.

In the conclusion the question of whether cyberspace in its various forms indeed fails to uphold its liberating promise will be addressed. Furthermore, I will compare the various fictional examples in this thesis in order to outline several guidelines which could potentially make cyberspace deliver on its liberating promise. In doing so, I hope to not only provide a platform for further discussion but also to put forward a notion of the “ideal” cyberspace.

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Limitation? Restriction? Constraint?

Now that the structure of this thesis has been outlined, there is one important question which remains to be answered. Thus far I have used words such as limiting, limitation, restricting, restriction, constraining, constraint, and so on. Yet what exactly is meant by these terms? Jeff Malpas’ notion that “the history of technological change is a history of

changing limitations and adaptations rather than of the abolishing of constraint” (Malpas

113, emphasis original) will provide the basis from which to begin answering that question.

From the notion that technological change entails a changing of limitations we may infer that limitations are not static and, rather, can move or change. The notion of “limitation” will therefore be used in this thesis to denote a limit which is imposed on a singular entity (e.g. an individual) but which is not necessarily “hard-locked”. To give just one example, in chapter one we will find that money often proves a limiting factor in cyberspace. However, money’s potential to limit characters’ activities in many cyberspace fictions is not fixed, as the requirement to pay real-world or cyberspace money (in many narratives these are the same currency) to overcome an obstacle in cyberspace may be removed or individuals may be able to overcome various obstacles by accumulating enough wealth. A limitation is therefore something which impinges on a cyberspace user in some way yet which may be overcome.

If limitations may be overcome we find that constraints function in the opposite way as the history of technological change has not been concerned with “the abolishing

of constraint” (Malpas 113, emphasis original). This is because constraints are much

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imposed. For example, in a case where a computer system maintains a rule that does not allow for its cyberspace users to be “giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars” (Cline 28) because this is hard-coded into the software, this rule constitutes a constraint.

Finally, I shall use “restriction” to refer to any given factor that impacts on cyberspace users through social mechanisms. Of course the distinction between these three terms is arbitrary, given that many factors may be said to limit, restrict or constrain a person. Yet, in discussing cyberspace, it is convenient to maintain separate terms which refer to different mechanisms that act upon the cyberspace user, and these terms will used in this thesis to denote a focus on one of the mechanisms which oppose the liberating promise of cyberspace. Take for instance the above example of a constraint, that is, the example from Cline’s novel: the rule that “giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars” (Cline 28) are not allowed on school grounds in Ready Player One. This hard and fast rule is probably the result of a real-world social norm carrying over to cyberspace as, in society, “giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars” (Cline 28) are generally not accepted. Furthermore, this rule may only form a limitation for an individual who can overcome it (e.g. a hacker). Hence, the rule may be said to constrain, restrict and limit. In such a case, to clarify which of the three mechanisms is being discussed —limit, restriction or constraint — one of the three terms will necessarily be used. Therefore, when the focus is on the social mechanism behind a given rule it will be called a restriction whereas if the focus is on a computer system’s hard-coded rule it will be referred to as a constraint. Similarly if the focus is on a rule that constitutes an obstacle to an individual, in either fiction or real life, some form of the term limitation

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shall be used.

As a second clarifying note, at various points in this thesis, theory and ideas about video games will be used to discuss cyberspaces and the line between cyberspaces and video games will, at points, become indistinct. This is because many fictional cyberspaces take a similar form to video games and, indeed, the first examples in real life of cyberspaces that function in ways similar to those in Snow Crash and Ready Player

One were avatar-driven online worlds in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online

Role-playing Game) genre.

It is important to remember that games are real examples of functional cyberspaces which are, like their fictional equivalents, deeply connected to real life. For instance, reading about World of Warcraft in news sources demonstrates how games and their digital worlds not only mirror but also are connected to real-life developments. For example, World of Warcraft has seen several real disasters, including a digital plague, and a quick Google search will confirm that players worry about such ostensibly “real” problems as the inflation of virtual currencies. Thus, discussion about cyberspaces and video games is necessarily linked and there is much overlap in applicable theories on these topics. This thesis will, therefore, not make a hard distinction between the two as games and cyberspace fictions are, in my view, closely related.

Finally, in order to keep discussion about the various novels and types of cyberspaces clear, a distinction needs to be made between fictional cyberspaces and real cyberspaces as well as the fictional world of the novel and real life. When specifically referring to the world or cyberspace found in a novel I shall either refer to the novel in question or use the terms fictional cyberspace and real world (of the text). If making a

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distinction between the world in a novel and outside, I will call the world outside the novel (that is, the one we live in) real life. Likewise, I shall denote discussions of cyberspaces outside of novels by calling these cyberspaces real, actual or real-life cyberspaces. When a statement is about the concept of cyberspace in general I shall simply use the word cyberspace.

Having clarified these issues I will now examine the most traditional type of cyberspace which is often thought by science fiction fans to be the very definition of the term cyberspace, and is also highly influential in current thinking about the design of a virtual reality experience, namely cyberspace powered by virtual reality technologies.

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Chapter 1: Virtual Reality

The most appropriate concept to begin with in an examination of the failure behind the liberating promise of cyberspace is the traditional fictional cyberspace which takes the form of virtual reality. These social worlds are often the result of advanced telecommunication and virtual reality technologies and are, therefore, the cyberspaces often said to be on the horizon when discussing upcoming technologies like virtual reality headsets. Most important, however, is the consideration that these cyberspaces are the primary driving-force behind the notion that cyberspaces have a liberating effect. For example, in narratives which contain a virtual reality, we almost always encounter the notion that one may be represented by any desired avatar and that users of fictional cyberspaces “will find freedom and relief when they live through less stigmatized virtual shapes” (Castranova, emphasis added).4 Take for instance this passage from Neal

Stephenson’s Snow Crash:

Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment. If you’re ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful. If you’ve just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. (Stephenson Snow Crash 33-34)

The cyberspace in this narrative is described as allowing the user to “look any way you want” (Snow Crash 33) and may thus have a liberating effect. However, in this initial description we also already encounter one limitation which potentially hinders one’s ability to access the liberating realm: “the limitations of your equipment” (Snow Crash 33). As such, the promise of free embodiment of any desired avatar is immediately paired 4 http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/

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with a limiting factor.

Having seen this initial example, the question becomes how widespread these liberating promises, limitations and restrictions are in the discussion and depiction of virtual realities. As it turns out, there are many limitations and restrictions imposed on virtual reality users simply because this type of cyberspace is connected to and mirrors the real worlds of the texts. In other words, virtual realities prove how “[c]yberspace is not hermetically sealed” (Allen 1184). Virtual reality therefore fails to be a liberating cyberspace as its functioning is tied too closely to the real world in a novel or to real life. In order to prove that cyberspace is not hermetically sealed however, it is necessary to examine two virtual realities and their limitations and restrictions. In doing so, one will find that, much as in real life, there are two factors which impose limitations and restrictions on users of the virtual reality, namely, wealth and society.

Wealth and the Economy of Cyberspace

The most widespread factor that imposes limitations on users of virtual reality cyberspaces and which will, for most, be immediately apparent, is the fact that nearly anything one desires to do or obtain still costs money. It should require little explanation as to why one’s economic situation may limit an individual and such limitations are amplified in fictional cyberspaces as these cyberspaces are, more often than not, intimately connected with the real world they attempt to mimic or replace and thus share many of its economic problems. The limitations insufficient wealth can bring are therefore numerous and prove that virtual reality “and the flesh-and-bone space of the users is a two-way street” (Bomse 1747). Furthermore, cyberspaces often function on the

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principle that access to various features requires an investment, and it is therefore true in many of these worlds that the ability of users to engage with and immerse themselves is limited to “[a] narrow band of possible modes of interaction” (Malpas 114) until they pay for such privileges as access, avatars, various abilities or expensive equipment. As an example of wealth-imposed limitations in action I shall examine Ernest Cline’s Ready

Player One as the entire novel revolves around cyberspace, wealth, limitations and

restrictions.

In Ready Player One the narrative unfolds around a cyberspace called OASIS. Protagonist Wade Watts is on the hunt for an Easter egg hidden in OASIS by its recently deceased creator. This Easter egg promises the finder a real-world fortune as well as significant power within the OASIS itself. Following from this premise, the entire narrative of Ready Player One consists of the way in which the social cyberspace of OASIS is navigated, and the power struggles which occur in the narrative resulting from the possibility of instant economic wealth. Readers follow Wade as he journeys from being a poor orphan in the real world of the text, to his ascent to a position as wealthiest competitor in the Easter egg hunt. Particularly interesting in this transformation are the various limitations which at first, due to Wade’s poverty, affect him with full force but which lift as he becomes increasingly wealthy.

At the beginning of Ready Player One Wade’s “avatar ha[s] only a few meager possessions” which are the best he “[can] afford” (Cline 27). The novel’s opening also informs readers that “[i]tems in the OASIS had just as much value as things in the real world (sometimes more)” (Cline 27) and that the “OASIS credit [is] the coin of the realm, and in these dark times, it [is] also one of the world’s most stable currencies, valued

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higher than the dollar, pound, euro, or yen” (Cline 27-28).

Interaction with and within the OASIS cyberspace revolves primarily around money. Moreover, being wealthy or being poor greatly affects the OASIS user’s experience of this virtual reality as economic status directly influences interactions with other users. For example, in an encounter between Wade and a school bully, Wade is ridiculed for the clothes his avatar wears. Here Wade’s “avatar was wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans, one of the free default skins you could select when you created your account” and this causes the bully to ridicule Wade as “[l]ike his Cro-Magnon friends, Todd13 wore an expensive designer skin, probably purchased in some offworld mall” (Cline 30). Hence, in the OASIS virtual reality, wealth is a primary driving force behind interaction and while “items were nothing but ones and zeros stored on the OASIS servers . . . they [are] also status symbols” (Cline 59). Thus, even though economic status should be irrelevant in a virtual space, Ready Player One demonstrates that material possessions (i.e. wealth) still determine how one may interact with society in a virtual world.

The importance of wealth in virtual reality is further established in Cline’s novel through the repeated suggestion that the economy of OASIS also plays an integral part in the novel’s real world. Importantly, the real and digital economies overlap and mix in

Ready Player One. As such OASIS does not serve as a separate virtual reality but as a

virtual extension of reality. Hence, in Ready Player One the real world and the virtual reality share limitations related to wealth: if you are poor in the real world you are poor in OASIS and if you become rich in OASIS you become rich in the real world. In other words, the novel demonstrates how “[c]yberspace is not hermetically sealed” (Allen

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1184) in cyberspace narratives, as currency flows freely between both the real world and virtual reality of the text.

The close connection between wealth and limitations in OASIS due to the economic link with the real world is most evident right at the outset of Ready Player One as Wade constantly encounters obstacles due to insufficient funds. For instance, to travel in OASIS “you [have] to pay a teleportation fare . . . and that cost[s] money” (Cline 31). While there is supposedly an “absence of geographic boundaries in virtual space” (Bomse 1726) this teleportation fare is textual evidence of “real-world” economic limitations, or limitations that would seem “real-world” economic hindrances to most 21st-century

readers. In other words, the notion of paying for teleportation that does not involve the physical transportation of persons or objects implies that real-world systems of payment and notions of value have infiltrated OASIS. Desperate to travel, Wade “tried to find a part-time after-school job, just to earn some walking-around money” but “it was completely hopeless” as “[m]illions of college-educated adults couldn’t get one of those jobs” (Cline 51, emphasis original). Hence, Wade encounters an arbitrary economic obstacle in virtual reality that has its basis in real-world issues.

Noting that many of the obstacles Wade encounters at the beginning of the novel are related to wealth or the lack thereof, it should come as no surprise that the main antagonist of the narrative comes in the form of IOI (Innovative Online Industries): a corporation wishing to privatize OASIS in order to make a hefty profit by introducing higher prices and more fees. To Wade the privatization of virtual reality would be “like someone threatening to take away the sun, or charge a fee to look up at the sky” (Cline 34). Ready Player One is, therefore, fictional evidence of the real-life notion that

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[e]ven among the plural voices affirming that ‘another world is possible,’ there is often the expedient misconception that economic justice, mitigation of climate change, and egalitarian social relations can somehow occur alongside the continued existence of corporations like Google, Apple, and General Electric. (Crary 49) The novel thus demonstrates that textual and real-life cyberspaces that are designed to function as a virtual reality do not necessarily constitute “escapist fantas[ies]” (Bomse 1745) as they remain intimately connected to the real world in economic structure and this in turn means that real-world corporations and wealth play a huge role in virtual reality itself. This economic link between material and virtual worlds undermines the potential of cyberspace to liberate users as one of the most limiting real-world factors, wealth, still applies.

The primary role that wealth plays in Ready Player One’s cyberspace is not an isolated case and many other textual and real-life virtual realities function according to the same principles as OASIS. In this regard, it is noteworthy that many fictional cyberspaces function according to the principles of capitalism and that currency is almost always shared between real world and cyberspace, and that, in these cyberspaces one’s real-world wealth limits one’s cyberspace wealth and vice-versa.

Interestingly, the fictional shared-currency model that novels often adopt has influenced real-life thinking about the function of wealth in cyberspaces. One example is the real-life cyberspace Second Life. In Second Life

people can buy and own land and conduct business . . . using Linden Dollars as currency, which may be exchanged for U.S. dollars. Because more and more people participate in [Second Life] and make real money from their virtual businesses,

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[Second Life] is another world that is both an extension of the world and a representation of another type of real world. (Liao 88)

This real-life instance of virtual reality specifically took inspiration from fiction as “Philip Rosedale, the founder of [Second Life], said in an interview, [that] the idea was inspired by Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, where two worlds exist simultaneously: ‘the real world, and the global, highly realistic online space called the Metaverse’” (Liao 88). Second Life thus demonstrates the process by which cyberspace fiction influences real-life developments.

Snow Crash, being an example of a novel that has served as a model for the

construction of an actual cyberspace, also requires comment. Because Second Life facilitates “the freedom to create any kind of avatar” (Liao 89, emphasis added), in order to allow “the creation and play of identities through avatars” (Liao 87), one would expect its inspiration to similarly allow various freedoms. Yet, in Snow Crash cyberspace fails to fulfill the liberating promise and examining the novel reveals that its virtual reality features many of the same limitations and restrictions as Ready Player One.

Noting moreover, that Second Life took inspiration from Snow Crash’s handling of virtual currency it should be no surprise that in Snow Crash’s cyberspace, similarly to

Ready Player One’s OASIS, wealth again forms an arbitrary limitation. Snow Crash’s

cyberspace is called the Metaverse and, as mentioned earlier, in the Metaverse “[y]our avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of your equipment” (Stephenson Snow Crash 33). Hence, the first limiting factor encountered in the narrative is related to wealth as access to, and the experience of, the Metaverse is mediated by real world equipment.

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Further opposing the idea of Snow Crash’s virtual reality as a liberating space are the limitations that real-world and cyberspace wealth impose on the virtual representation of a users’ sense of self in the Metaverse. The exception to this rule are hackers as, in

Snow Crash, hackers are indeed liberated through their ability to hack and manipulate

cyberspace in order to fulfill their desires by circumnavigating the Metaverse’s limitations. Protagonist Hiro, for example, is one of the only figures in the novel who has programmed a completely custom-designed avatar and is therefore able to self-represent as desired. However, this “myth of the lone hacker perpetuates the fantasy that the asymmetrical relation of individual to network can be creatively played to the former’s advantage” (Crary 46) and, in Snow Crash’s cyberspace, hackers are a minority.

In contrast to the hackers, those who cannot program are limited to represent themselves in the Metaverse through the purchase of avatars. Yet, many of the cheaper avatars come with various limitations and this in turn limits one’s ability to interact with the Metaverse itself. As an example, take two of the most popular models: Brandy and Clint. These avatars are used by many people because they are cheap and it is therefore possible to simply “run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy” (Stephenson Snow Crash 35). However, Brandy and Clint constrain their users’ ability to express themselves in face-to-face (or rather: avatar-to-avatar) communication as they are only capable of producing “a limited repertoire of facial expressions” (Snow Crash 35). This means that they hinder their user in basic Metaverse communication. Furthermore, Brandy and Clint, as the names suggest, are the Metaverse equivalents of Barbie and Ken and they are therefore extremely “banal identities” (Worthington 192). In other words, there is no complexity in their “presentation” (Malpas

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115) as they simply express two gender stereotypes. In sum, Brandy and Clint emphasize how, whereas “traditionally individuals have interacted with each other using face-to-face verbal and physical cues limited by their own physical and material conditions, cyberspace’s conditions of interaction are much more constructed” (Punday 194). Hence, in Snow Crash a lack of wealth means that one is often severely limited in the fundamental act of representing oneself in the Metaverse.

In Snow Crash, wealth thus again forms an obstacle in the virtual world which serves to arbitrarily restrain the way the novel’s cyberspace functions. Both OASIS and the Metaverse therefore emphasize “the significance of material conditions in and on virtual space” (Bomse 1746). As far as the function of money is concerned, these cyberspaces function in much the same way as real life and it is, therefore, as Slavoj Žižek says at the beginning of The Reality of the Virtual: “. . . virtual reality is a rather miserable idea. It simply means: let us reproduce, in an artificial digital medium, our experience of reality.”5

Social Restrictions and the Limitation of the Virtual Self

The most oppressive limitations one encounters in virtual reality fictions, however, are those placed on the virtual representation of the cyberspace user. Brandy and Clint of

Snow Crash are initial evidence of the way in which fictional cyberspaces do not always

have a liberating effect with regards to self-expression as certain factors, in Brandy and Clint’s case wealth, may impose various limitations on the virtual reality experience. However, in many virtual realities the possibility of fully expressing oneself is not only limited by obstacles such as wealth but also through restrictive social norms. Hence,

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while technically, as stated in Snow Crash, “[y]our avatar can look any way you want it to” (Snow Crash 33) this is not necessarily the case in many fictional cyberspaces as real-world societies within fiction often dictate the norms in cyberspace.

In Ready Player One the most obvious examples of restrictions imposed on cyberspace users prove to be various regulations in place at school. Wade’s “generation had never known a world without the OASIS” (Cline 34) and therefore the link between a person’s real world self and their OASIS avatar is so strong that “[t]he lines of distinction between a person’s real identity and that of their avatar began to blur” (Cline 60). Because of this strong link between a person’s real identity and their virtual representation in the world of Ready Player One, it has become possible to follow education in the OASIS instead of in a real school. However, at virtual school the personal freedom of the students is limited and restricted in various ways.

First, whereas “[y]ou could give your OASIS avatar any name you liked, as long as it was unique” (Cline 28) this basic freedom is limited at school because “students weren’t allowed to use their avatar names” (Cline 29) and are instead “required to use their real first names, followed by a number, to differentiate them from other students with the same name” (Cline 29). Going back as far as “[t]he advent of the CB radio [which] brought with it “handles” for people” (Flanagan 120) it was already true that “handles provided an identity for individuals without revealing much of who they were or what they were about” (Flanagan 120). In Ready Player One’s cyberspace, where “handles have been replaced by screen names and addresses” (Flanagan 120), a similar development has taken place as “[p]eople rarely [use] their real names online” (Cline 28). “Anonymity [is] one of the major perks of the OASIS” (Cline 28) and “[m]uch of the

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OASIS’s popularity and culture [is] built around this fact” (Cline 28). Hence, the school regulations prove limiting as they directly oppose the freedom that “screen names and addresses” offer by allowing “folks to be as real or imaginary as they want to be” (Flanagan 120). The “individual” is therefore limited in his or her ability “to disclose as much, as little, or as unreal information as s/he chooses” (Flanagan 120) and the liberating effect of one’s cyberspace freedom of choosing a name (and not being limited to a real marker of identity) is thus removed. In other words, the OASIS’s ability to be “a theater of performed identities” (Nakamura 31) is restricted by real-world social expectations as school regulations force students to retain real-world identity markers instead of allowing them to fully embody desired identities

The enforcement of social regulations and the link that this act establishes to the real world goes even further with a second restriction that school imposes on students’ avatars. Wade’s school has a “strictly enforced dress code” which “required that all student avatars be human, and of the same gender and age as the student” (Cline 28). Hence, how avatars are allowed to look is constrained while on school grounds and this school regulation is therefore an excellent example of both the way in which “profoundly conventional social practices shape this new non-corporeal [virtual] space” (Punday 194) and how social norms may restrict users in cyberspace.

Examining the consequences of this regulation we initially find that for certain students this restriction does not run contrary to their wishes. One example of this is Wade who has designed his “avatar’s face and body to look, more or less, like [his] own” (Cline 28) and he therefore falls within the dress code even though his “virtual self” (Cline 28) has been enhanced in various ways: “My avatar had a slightly smaller nose

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than me, and he was taller. And thinner. And more Muscular. And he didn’t have any teenage acne. But aside from these minor details, we looked more or less identical” (Cline 28). Hence, Wade is allowed a certain level of freedom in deciding how he wishes to be represented in virtual space as he does not desire to “pass” (Nakamura 32), an expression that describes representing oneself as being of a different gender, age or race on the internet. The OASIS can thus be said to have a liberating effect in this regard as Wade may embody his desired virtual representation anywhere in cyberspace. However, whereas Wade’s slightly-changed avatar is permissible at school not everyone enjoys the same luxury of representation. Not taking it quite so far as a “giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn” (Cline 28) Ready Player One also features Wade’s best friend Aech who clearly demonstrates the restrictive nature of the school regulations as she has to circumvent various obstacles in order to be represented as desired.

Throughout most of Ready Player One Wade does not “know anything about who Aech was in the real world” (Cline 39) and the novel therefore repeatedly mentions that Wade has “never actually met” (Cline 39) Aech in person. Yet Aech is Wade’s “closest friend” (Cline 39). Aech’s avatar is “a tall, broad-shouldered Caucasian male with dark hair and brown eyes” (Cline 38). Seeing as Wade “asked him once if he looked anything like his avatar in real life” to which Aech replied “Yes. But in real life, I’m even more handsome” (Cline 38), it comes as a surprise to both reader and Wade that Aech is revealed to be a “heavyset African American girl” (Cline 318) in the real world. Aech is thus an example of how “[e]lectronic ‘crossdressing,’ picking an on-line name of the opposite sex, is common on computer networks . . . as is the use of a cryptic, gender-neutral name that permits its user to shift orientation when communicating in different

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chat rooms” (Adams 166).

Aech’s reasons for adopting a different role in the OASIS are rooted in real-world social problems carrying over to virtual reality. Aech’s mother “had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given” (Cline 320) and this caused her to lie “about her daughter’s race and gender on the [school’s] application” (Cline 320). Aech’s mother’s decision to change her virtual representation in order to be treated equally to the white men that populate the fictional real world of Ready Player One thus demonstrates how, in both real life and fiction, “avatars do not represent the dream of cyberspace as a space without stereotype of human and discrimination [because] cyberspace is a space that reproduces these stereotypes” (Liao 89). Thus “[q]uite in contrast to the early belief that cyberspace offers a way to escape gender, race, and class as conditions of social interaction . . . online discourse is woven of stereotypical cultural narratives that reinstall precisely these conditions” (Punday 199).

A further complication arises when it becomes evident that Aech is “gay” (Cline 321). However, OASIS provides her with an opportunity to “pass” (Nakamura 32) in the role with which she most closely identifies and it may therefore be claimed that OASIS has a liberating effect on Aech. Yet it is also true that, in order to have this liberating experience, Aech has to circumvent the OASIS’s limitations and restrictions. For example, if Aech’s mother had not lied, Aech would have been confronted with restriction at school where it is “required that all student avatars be human, and of the same gender and age as the student” (Cline 28) and this means that Aech is required to cheat the system by providing the school with “a photorealistic rendering of her male

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avatar’s face, which she’d modeled after her own features” (Cline 320). Aech, therefore, has to circumnavigate various restrictions in order to use the OASIS as she desires. Aech thus demonstrates how Ready Player One’s cyberspace is dominated by various limitations and restrictions that need to be overcome, rather than being a place where one is liberated from the complications of the real-world. In short, the novel proves that the notion of “cyberspace as a place free from the socio-physical limitations on human interaction” (Punday 197) is flawed.

If there are “some classical conceptions of play” (Jenkins 264) of which one is the conception that play facilitates “identity formation” (Jenkins 264) in real-life then the character of Aech provides a good example of how the playing of a game, or in this case inhabiting a cyberspace, can be an outlet for complex real-life identity issues. Yet, in this case, the game is not some form of consequence-free ludic expression because the cyberspace of Ready Player One functions as a second reality which, in some ways even more strictly than the novel’s real world, restricts the expression of identity in various ways. In other words, this cyberspace is not “an unpoliced space for social experimentation, a space where [one] . . . can vent their frustrations and imagine alternative adult roles” (Jenkins 276). Ready Player One therefore provides another reason (besides the importance of wealth) as to why a cyberspace that functions as a virtual reality might fail to be liberating, in this case because even in this virtual realm “[t]o be gendered [like Aech] is to be constrained; to escape gender is to escape gravity and to fly above it all” (Jenkins 293), which s/he certainly does not. The idea that “[i]n cyberspace the self ‘becomes a ship that can sail fluidly through different times and places, always moving and changing, adapting to each port of call but anchoring

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nowhere’” (Adams 166) therefore seems wildly optimistic as the potentially liberating effects of virtual realities are often submerged below a sea of limitations and restrictions. It is instead more accurate to state that “men and women sail through cyberspace in the same leaky boat” (Allen 1176).

OASIS and Metaverse: Not a Safe-Haven or Space Above

Following from these examples taken from cyberspace fiction, it should be evident that various real-world limitations and restrictions apply in these fictional virtual realities. Hence, whereas wealth should not be a limiting factor in a space that does not depend upon “material conditions” (Punday 194), there are still arbitrary monetary obstacles in virtual reality and in fictional texts that address or contain virtual realities. For example the truth that in both Ready Player One and Snow Crash virtual travel, clothes and many other virtual objects, which have no material value, still cost money shows how the real-world economic mentality has been retained in cyberspace, ostensibly as a means to establish a resemblance to the material world. Furthermore, real-world social norms are still in full effect for the majority of users in the cyberspaces of Ready Player One and

Snow Crash and, whereas a character like Aech is the exception, given that, for her,

OASIS is the flight from the physical that Worthington claims cyberspace to be (Worthington 192), she effectively cheats and circumvents the system. Hence, “[t]he belief that cyberspace produces an absence of material conditions (geography, gender, and race, to list just a few)” (Bomse 1745) is flawed.

It is perhaps somewhat facile to conclude that these fictional virtual realities function as a second copy of the reality of the text. Yet this indeed seems to be the case in

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these two fictional cyberspaces as any changes that would make them truly fulfill cyberspace’s liberating promise are not allowed, such as for instance traveling for free and virtual encounters with such monstrosities as “a giant talking penis” (Stephenson

Snow Crash 34) or “giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars” (Cline 28).

It may therefore be concluded that the popular virtual reality concept of cyberspace imposes various limitations and restrictions on the users of these virtual realities. Furthermore these limitations and restrictions find their basis in the real worlds of the novels. Hence, the virtual reality concept of cyberspace fails to uphold cyberspace’s liberating promise because virtual reality is purposefully designed to mimic the world of the text (in fiction) or real-life.

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Chapter 2: The Diamond Age

In contrast to Ready Player One and Snow Crash, which are dystopian depictions of a near-future, Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age is optimistic about the technological future. Stephenson’s novel is, in some respects, “the clearest example in which cyberspace reveals an evolution from a dystopian atmosphere to a more humane ground, serving as the basis for the development of useful technologies and the amelioration of the self” (Huereca 143). This optimism about technology is evident in The Diamond Age through technologies in the novel that make it possible for nearly any object imaginable to be constructed at will. Hence, the novel emphasizes how some bizarre creations have become common everyday objects. Specifically, readers encounter mechanical horses that fold up and contain a hat compartment, household devices the size of microwaves which compose and decompose matter within minutes, appropriately called “matter compilers” (Stephenson The Diamond Age 46), and nanotechnology that infiltrates a person’s body and performs computations through the exchange of bodily fluids with others who have also been infected with the same “virus”. However, not all of these futuristic creations are benign and, much like the cyberspaces from Ready Player One and Snow Crash, Stephenson’s novel features a cyberspace that is not free from “draconian control and corporate dominance” (Huereca 143).

The Diamond Age’s cyberspace comes in the form of “The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” (Stephenson The Diamond Age 50, emphasis original). The Primer is

an initially blank storybook which generates content in real-time and can react to its user either by itself, or through an actor. Hence, The Primer qualifies as the most basic type of cyberspace as it can act either as a telecommunication tool, that filters communication

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carried out through its own interactive format, or as a highly interactive database. Moreover, The Primer’s capabilities allow it to technically be a liberating cyberspace as its novel idea of a cyberspace in the form of a children’s book belongs to the category of “technologies [that] expand the space of . . . imagination” (Jenkins 266).

However, The Primer’s failure as a liberating cyberspace is apparent from its very conception. “As a tool designed by men (like any other contrivance), The Primer is handed out to women . . . by a trickster figure (a modern Prometheus) who conveys the secrets of the bumptious faux gods (corporate managers) to earthly humans, and who undergoes banishment from the divine spheres of the imperialistic power” (Huereca 147). This modern Prometheus is none other than The Primer’s designer John Percival Hackworth, who is tasked by his employer to design The Primer as a guide and tool that will accompany his daughter as she grows up. The Primer is thus meant to perform the task of raising her and this means that The Primer’s intended function, as its full title “The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer” (Stephenson The Diamond Age 50, emphasis added) suggests, is to shape the identity of a young girl into a lady. It could, therefore, be said to act as an example of “delimiters of subjectivity in cyberspace” (Worthington 207) as it imposes a role that The Primer’s designers consider appropriate on young girls. Moreover, the notion that this cyberspace’s influence does not limit itself to the virtual world further opposes the idea that The Primer’s cyberspace could have a liberating effect. The Primer therefore not only instructs girls by telling them what they should and should not aspire to be but also shapes their real-world identities through a controlled cyberspace environment. Hence, The Primer is nothing short of “a world made by adult companies and sold to children” (Jenkins 276) that can endlessly reconfigure itself

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according the child’s imagination while simultaneously limiting it and not allowing it to wander beyond the constraints imposed by The Primer’s designers.

The most important question regarding The Primer is how its odd reconfiguration of a cyberspace and this cyberspace’s restricting, limiting or liberating capabilities have an effect on its users. Examining The Primer’s role in The Diamond Age will make evident the extreme limits that this cyberspace imposes, not only through the constrained nature of the technology itself but also due to the restrictive intent of The Primer’s design (which forces users of The Primer to adopt a particular role, both inside and outside of The Primer’s cyberspace). The Primer thus not only limits the individual within the virtual realm but also limits him or her in the real world. Hence, The Diamond Age illustrates the dangers of the “the reciprocity that exists between cyberspace and living beings” (Dyens 327). In order to understand why and how this is the case, however, it is necessary to examine The Primer’s users.

Enslavement through Edutainment

Protagonist Nell lives with her brother Harvard and mother Tequila in a lower-class neighborhood. Tequila, a single mother, is constantly working and brings home various abusive boyfriends. As a result of this situation, Nell has been neglected throughout most of her life and she therefore has a perfect background to accept a cyberspace as role model and caregiver.

When Nell receives a copy of The Primer she immediately becomes obsessed with it, and it becomes a combination of video game and literature as it presents her with the “virtual play spaces which allow home-bound children . . . to extend their reach, to

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explore, manipulate and interact with a more diverse range of imaginary places than constitute the often drab, predictable, and overly-familiar spaces of their everyday lives” (Jenkins 263). While Nell explores these imaginative spaces The Primer works to teach her valuable life lessons through its stories. Nell is therefore engaged with The Primer from an early age and one might plausibly say that she is raised by it.

However, whereas The Primer initially seems to be a stand-alone device it soon becomes evident that it is connected to a network. The Diamond Age as a whole “presents sundry complex electronic networks . . . that acquire multiple significances and roles within society such as sophisticated entertainment [and] basic education for children” (Huereca 144). Of all these networks, The Primer makes use of “the Ractive network, a purveyor of interactive adult entertainment and a basic Sesame-Street responsive type of education for children, a type of cyberspace to which people jack-in in diverse manners” (Huereca 144). Hence, behind Nell’s copy of The Primer there is a “ractor” (Stephenson

The Diamond Age 87), an actor who acts through digital media (i.e. cyberspaces), named

Miranda who, as the narrative progresses, becomes increasingly more like a mother to Nell. The Primer thus allows connections between people in the real world of the novel, as becomes evident when Nell realizes that The Primer cannot be autonomous and must be allowing her to communicate with a person:

She had always felt that there was some essence in the book, something that had understood her and even loved her, something that forgave her when she did wrong and appreciated what she did right. When she’d been very young, she hadn’t questioned this at all; it had been part of the book’s magic. More recently she had understood it as the workings of a parallel computer of enormous size and

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power, carefully programmed to understand the human mind and give it what it needed. Now she wasn’t so sure . . . Could it be that the Primer was just a conduit, a technological system that mediated between Nell and some human being who really loved her? In the end, she knew, this was basically how all ractives worked. (The Diamond Age 403)

For Nell the The Primer can thus fulfill the role of a telecommunication tool and this means that The Primer has actually given her a mother. On first examination, Nell’s use of The Primer has seemingly not had an adverse effect on her and using The Primer has therefore provided Nell with a liberating experience in the real world as she grows from being a poor girl to fully embodying her Primer character, Princess Nell.

Yet it may also be argued that The Primer actually limits Nell as it is “a didactic tool . . . intended to educate a selected elite to produce polymaths and leaders” (Huereca 144). This is to say that The Primer actively imposes a role on Nell through its cyberspace. For example, The Primer hinders Nell’s communication with Miranda by filtering their interactions through its own storybook metaphors. The Primer thus shapes the message as its “instructors and learners have been fitted to the demands of technology and become cyborgized” (Yeaman 104) because they are forced to interact within the narrative that The Primer generates. This means that The Primer shares “[one] of the limitations of the contemporary video game” in “that it provides only prestructured forms of interactivity, and in that sense,” is “more like playgrounds and city parks”, which offer a structured and controlled experience, “rather than wild spaces” (Jenkins 272) which offer freedom. In short, The Primer’s cyberspace is ultimately a cleverly masked, guided experience and not a liberation of the individual through the open possibilities of

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cyberspace.

The Primer’s cyberspace thus fails to fulfill on cyberspace’s liberating promise because, although it should be an aid in dealing with the real world, it, just like the cyberspaces in Snow Crash and Ready Player One, shapes and limits Nell’s individuality in various ways by imposing on her the role of princess. In other words, by using The Primer its users “(all of them women, since such a contrivance was devised to be tested among them) learn to ‘weave’ their own costumes so as to fulfill their roles, as in ancient times when women forged their own disguises in order to please men by transmuting into whatever they requested” (Huereca 145). Hence, The Primer’s cyberspace is far more limiting than it at first glance seems to be and, whereas interacting with The Primer has, theoretically, liberated Nell by allowing her to escape from an abusive home and find a new mother, it could also be argued that Nell’s education limits her to the role which the designers of The Primer deem appropriate. This restrictive intent of The Primer’s designers becomes evident when, in a letter from “Victorian head honcho” (Huereca 144) Lord Finkle-MacGraw intended to aid in the design of The Primer, John Percival Hackworth is given a poem. The letter opens with the sentiment that “I hope the above poem illuminates the ideas I only touched on during our meeting of Tuesday last” and continues to explain:

Coleridge wrote in reaction to the tone of contemporary children’s literature, which was didactic, much like the stuff they feed to our children in the ‘best’ schools. As you can see, his concept of a children’s poem is refreshingly nihilistic. Perhaps this sort of material might help to inculcate sought-after qualities. (Stephenson The

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Hence, The Primer’s cyberspace does not provide Nell with “the power to reinvent the self and its relation to the world” (Crary 74) because while it helps her get out of an abusive home, it actively restricts and perhaps even enslaves Nell to the ideological content deemed appropriate by its designers.

However, The Primer’s cyberspace is not entirely without liberating aspects. For instance, The Primer does not force “the restrictions placed on girls’ play” on Nell, which may have “a crippling effect” (Jenkins 268) as it teaches Nell many diverse skills. Yet, ultimately it shapes her into the role of “a little Princess named Nell” (Stephenson The

Diamond Age 95) from the moment she picks up The Primer. Nell is therefore restricted

to a predetermined role by The Primer, which demonstrates how “our body is the screen (the signifying surface) by which the machine has access to a reality” (Dyens 328) and how this machine can, in turn, have an effect on that reality. Most importantly, The

Diamond Age emphasizes the dangers of “the reciprocity that exist between cyberspace

and living beings” (Dyens 327) by illustrating the devastating consequences that using The Primer’s cyberspace has on a “quarter of a million” (Stephenson The Diamond Age 168) girls.

The Mouse Army

Towards the end of The Diamond Age “[t]he enthusiasm about the Primer reaches the other rivaling ‘phyles’, and soon the vying for such a gadget (implying a competition for education and information) constitutes one of the central plots of the book” (Huereca 144). This vying goes so far that, eventually, the various “governmental technocracies from diverse factions (the Victorians, the Chinese, the Nipponese and the black

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community)” (Huereca 144) described throughout the narrative prepare for an all-out war. During this “fierce competition among patriarchal forces” (Huereca 150) a highly unconventional army arrives: the army of Princess Nell. Nell’s army consists entirely of young Chinese girls (of about Nell’s age or younger) who prove to be extremely effective fighters. The army, strangely, even surprises Nell who has been entirely unaware that she has an army to command until the moment it appears. Sadly, the origins of this army are to be found in the problems of Chinese society and the limiting and restrictive effects of a constrained cyberspace.

Leading up to the battle where Nell’s army appears, one subplot of Stephenson’s novel has concerned itself with the growing tensions between the Celestial Kingdom and the Neo-Victorians, two of the “governmental technocracies” (Huereca 150) that are competing for power in The Diamond Age’s world. The novel illustrates this conflict by describing the social issues that trouble both groups. For the Chinese (the Celestial Kingdom) this problem amounts to an overabundance of unwanted young girls. To solve this problem a character named Dr. X “appears as a ‘benefactor’, though simultaneously as a controller of masses, a reimaged version of a Mao Zedong” (Huereca 152) as is revealed in a shocking sequence where another character, a Chinese judge named Fang, visits one of Dr. X’s ships:

Dr. X chose a door, apparently at random, swung it open, and held it for Judge Fang. Judge Fang bowed slightly and stepped through it into a room about the dimensions of a basketball court, though with a lower ceiling . . . Then he realized that the room was otherwise filled with cribs, hundreds of cribs, and that each crib had a perfect little girl baby in it . . . Judge Fang felt dizzy. He was not

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willing to acknowledge the reality of what he saw . . . Judge Fang whirled on his heel and stormed out of the room, brushing rudely past Dr. X. He picked a direction at random and walked, strode, ran down the corridor, past five doors, ten, fifty, then stopped for no particular reason and burst through another door. It might as well have been the same room. (Stephenson The Diamond Age 166) After Fang’s initial shock, Dr. X proceeds to explain why he has summoned judge Fang: soon there will be no more resources to help the “quarter of a million” (The Diamond

Age 168) girls “when they are older and bigger, and must be educated and given space to

run around and play” (The Diamond Age 168). To solve this problem Dr. X desires to provide the “army of orphan girls with cybernetic education” (Huereca 152). In doing so, however, he “governs their destinies and ideologies on a large scale” (Huereca 152) and his solution eventually turns out to be far from liberating. Whereas judge Fang initially refuses to help and promptly leaves, he eventually comes across the perfect solution. What the girls need are “virtual play spaces which allow home-bound children . . . to extend their reach, to explore, manipulate and interact with a more diverse range of imaginary places” (Jenkins 263) and Fang soon encounters someone who can deliver exactly these in the form of cyberspaces.

Seemingly by coincidence Fang is set to judge Primer-designer John Percival Hackworth for stealing company property and illegally constructing a second copy of The Primer. At this trial, Fang asks Hackworth if, in return for leniency, he would be able to use his talents to serve the Celestial Kingdom. Fang’s first request is that Hackworth provide the data necessary so that “additional copies of the book may be made available to the small children crowding our orphanages” (The Diamond Age 178). Hackworth

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protests and explains that fulfilling this request will have disastrous consequences for the girls as the constrained design of The Primer is not suitable for the application. Hackworth argues that The Primer “requires the participation of adult ractors” (The

Diamond Age 179) in order to function properly, as the artificial intelligence it has is

constrained and is thus inadequate to the task of raising a child unassisted. Furthermore, the number of actors that would need to be hired makes the project economically unfeasible.

However, Judge Fang counters that “part of your responsibility will be to make alterations in The Primer so that it is suitable for our requirements – we can make do without those parts of the book that depend heavily on outside ractors” (The Diamond

Age 179), and so forces Hackworth to participate. The design of The Primer is therefore

adjusted, Hackworth even offers to “make changes in the content so that it will be more suitable for the unique cultural requirements of the Han readership” (The Diamond Age 179-180), and “without appreciating the ramifications” (The Diamond Age 179) these characters mass-produce The Primer. Hence, new adjusted copies of The Primer that are constrained in their functioning (due to real world economic limitations and social restrictions) are given to the girls under Dr X’s care. Since these copies are themselves constrained they, in turn, impose limits and restrictions on the education and identities of the “quarter of a million” (The Diamond Age 168) girls.

It will therefore come as no surprise that the Chinese girls are not constituted as thousands of unique individuals. In her copy of The Primer’s cyberspace Nell eventually encounters “the Mouse Army” (The Diamond Age 446) which, it turns out, is comprised of the Chinese girls with their Primers who share the “Primer network” (Huereca 145)

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