People have obsessive realities all over the place. Right now, the (American) Football players are practicing obsessively with no mind to anything else. There are plenty of monomaniacs in business. Writers write obsessively—there are so many people doing so many different things that exclude just about everything else. Their obsessions become their world and their only society.
Your question implies that the internet is not reality. Certainly, it is not meat space, but it is reality. The internet is a real thing and provides a real way to interact with the world.
We are not face to face (unless we use video chat), and we are not voice to voice (unless we use internet telephone), but we are writer to writer, which is no different from many famous relationships in history. Only we are more, because it isn’t just dialog or even trialog; it is multilog.
Plus, we don’t interact purely in mind space. We can actually have visual representations of ourselves and our environment. We can share video, sound, and images in addition to words. We can reach out to so many more people than was ever possible in meat space. One begins to wonder whether meat space is healthy. All right, I didn’t really mean that. I’m just making a point.
I love interacting with people in meat space. I love the physicality of it. I love seeing people’s body language and hearing the tone of their voices and watching their faces. I like dancing and playing basketball and making music together. Although, with respect to recording music, it is now possible to form collaborations where the members of the band are distributed around the world. It’s the internet that allows that.
I love the internet because it allows me to write and it gives me instant access to an audience. I can see whether I matter or anyone thinks I say anything worth reading right away, rather than trying to find a publisher who is willing to publish, and then seeing if the book succeeds.
Most people, I believe, use the same “persona” online as they do in meat space. Of course it is somewhat different due to the use of a different medium for communication, but the motivations and opinions are still the same. Some do develop an online persona that is different from their meat space persona. I don’t know if that’s a problem or not. Some people in meat space also act—trying to be someone they are not.
I think the internet is a very useful thing. I don’t see that there is much difference in the content of people’s interactions online compared to meat space. I think there is a difference in the quantity of interactions and, to some degree, the quality of their interactions. Meat space, of course, is physical and provide more information, which greatly enhances those interactions. But meat space interactions often take place in writing or in sound only. So the internet is just an extension of these things and an improvement on what was there before, allowing more people to take advantage of technologies in order to interact more.
As such, it brings us together more—us being people around the world. It enhances understanding. It provides a way to build larger consensuses.
I would not say the internet is different from reality. It is just a new tool. It’s a better tool. Our lives are just as real as they ever were.
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Composing members:
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