Seeing through machines

When Second Life works well, you're not really so aware that you're 'on the computer'. The machine itself becomes transparent and you're looking into the world or else feeling that you're immersed in it. If linguistic transparency is what enables us to be in the world of the text, then technological transparency does something similar - it simply mediates your communication. That's how Second Life becomes 'a place to meet'. Bolter and Grusin refer to virtuality as a 'medium whose purpose is to disappear' and they describe it in terms of the 'logic of transparent immediacy' (2000:23). Today all four of us had sound and for once the technology seemed transparent!