Virtual Reality Is No Substitute For Reality Con On-Line: Cyber Is Society’s Newest Form Of Escapism

Here’s the difference between a real neighborhood and an on-line computer neighborhood:

In a living, breathing, real-life neighborhood the grass really grows, dogs really bark, and the neighbors can actually see, hear and smell what is happening next door. In a computer-based neighborhood, it’s just dots on a screen.

Much hype and misplaced hope is being pushed along the information superhighway. A future of world communities! The promise of unfettered communication! Kindred spirits linked up night and day! Pull the plug on all this garbage. The world of cyberspace and virtual communities is a poor, sterile substitute for what really is going on next door.

On the computer, it’s all passwords and chat rooms that have the luxury of being turned on and off at will. When the going gets tough on-line, your neighbors can simply move out, with the click of the mouse, to another world where they feel more comfortable and where they can meet people who think, or write, just like them.

That’s not the experience of a real life. In your real neighborhood, when the barking dog keeps you awake, you must act. When a neighbor is burglarized, you must share the concern. In winter, the walks really need shoveling and the children need safe haven. Spiritual and profound acts occur every day. There is birth and death, love and sorrow, beauty and ugliness. The richness and meaning of life depend upon a geographically centered place.

On the screen, it’s just a Bill Gates-created illusion. Your on-line neighbors represent a thin sampling of humanity who happen to have money, time and good typing skills. When was the last time a baby chatted on-line? Or a great-grandmother? Or a true poet or carpenter? When was the last time you heard your neighbor’s kid struggling with the piano or catching a fly ball?

Confusing a computer-user group with the place where you actually live provides an easy excuse to sit at home with the doors closed, imagining the the world outside doesn’t affect you. That’s a dangerous and selfish assumption.

Embrace the place where you live, breathe and lay your head. Help that neighborhood and you help change the world. Live in a cyber neighborhood and you are but a hermit floating in a virtual world without a soul.

, DataTimes MEMO: See also David Bender’s opinion under headline “Internet is not a threat to community”

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN, EDITORIAL - From both sides CREDIT = Chris Peck/For the editorial board