Only real and virtual lives?

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In the long run, the distinction between the real and the virtual may turn out to be a disservice to the diversity in our lives. At the outset it certainly seemed to be a meaningful distinction, and even a helpful one for examining to how much (or how little) an extent our thoughts and behaviors were different in those two setting. And of course it also opened up vast opportunities for research into how people present (and perceive) themselves in those different settings. But by doing this it established a dichotomy and made real and virtual into the only worlds in which we present ourselves and experience our lives, and thus became a limiting metaphor since what we really encounter is a multi-chotomy.

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Go to: Life imitates art in the Boidem?, or
Go to: That's the way it always works, or
Go to: Strangers on a network.