The Internet: the "best of times" optimism
Virtual Reality is in a peculiar
world even dimension called “online.” While
you are offline somewhere accessing the Net—say,
in your study at your desktop computer—it is your VR interiority
that is surfing the Web. Note this oddity:
when online your must also be somewhere offline in
order to be online, but when offline you are not online.
Your VR surfing individual identity can be endlessly redefined,
moment to moment. As you click from website to website, chat room
to chat room, instant message to email, so can you change your
identity.
As a “virtual person” you can become anyone
at anytime.
If you want, you can expose who you “really
are” behind
your unreal identities through providing offline images, or you
can cleverly hide who you really are and present yourself through
one after
another unreal identity, e.g., fanciful User Ids and/or fake
images. Rarely do you or others ever expect
to meet face to face—offline—with
those you contact via the Net when using an unreal identity
or image.
In a truly unprecedented way, the Internet challenges you
to own your real identity. You can learn more about
yourself through these assumed virtual identities as you
surf and play. You can approach being “online” like
being at a masquerade party.
You can have lots of fun challenging others to figure out
who you are under your unreal fantasy names such as greatlover@xyz.
net or ohiogenius@rrz.
net. There is a definite cathartic playfulness as
Internet promise.
The Internet’s “best of times” optimists
see that it has broken through every physical border.
Continue—online
