much ado about "nothing"

I've just started reading "The Globalization of Nothing," by George Ritzer (ISBN: 0-7619-8807-6). His argument is that our culture is moving rapidly from "something" to "nothing" through the proliferation of mass-produced products and services that are centrally controlled, but available everywhere.

A case in point is obvious enough: the fast-food hamburger, which is produced identically in countless towns in multiple countries. The fast-food restaurant, Ritzer says, is a non-place (depersonalized, indigenous to nowhere) selling meat that comes from anywhere ("nothing"), served by employees who function as "non-people" and who can easily be replaced by others without missing a beat.

He cites the local tavern as an example of "something" -- a real place, with a bartender who knows the customers and has a distinct personality, and where the customers have real identities. These places thrive because of the personalization they offer and the reality that the bartender constructs.

"Nothing" is the term he uses for objects or places that are mass produced, not unique, not local, and generally not meaningful. "Something," then, is unique, meaningful, often local, and crafted.

None of these ideas are brand-new, of course, but try applying the concepts of "something" and "nothing" to the internet. To get started, let's look at another example from Ritzer's book: people who inhabit the costumes of Disney characters for their jobs and use scripts to portray their "personalities." If the employees quit, they're replaced by others who inhabit the costume. The enterprise thrives regardless of which person occupies the costume at any given time. Nothing else changes.

Now think of another "costume": for example, an avatar on Second Life. Like the people in the Disney costumes, you might not know what the person behind the avatar looks like outside the virtual world, but each avatar is inhabited by people expressing their creativity...and thus they are unique entities and they create "something," not "nothing."

My point -- and I do have one -- is that "real life" doesn't necessarily offer more meaning than some of the things you can enjoy in virtual life, nor vice-versa....but with some of the same players involved in both, we can -- and often have -- turned "something" into "nothing" again.