Is the virtual overtaking the real?

There is no point repeating the obvious, which by now became a standard phrase, an over-used observation of the reality that a blindman could not go unnoticed. Yes, the revolution in information and telecommunications technology has contributed to making us a globalised little village or a flat world, as Thomas Friedman likes to call it. It is certainly indisputable that the ability to connect to people across the world through audio conferencing facilities, cell phones and blackberries has increased exponentially as has purportedly the productivity of people working across the world. It’s as real is at gets, our virtual world. That is perhaps the problem as well as the solution. When the virtual becomes more real than the real, have a certain line been passed? Should we bother to notice that we are transitioning from the real to the virtual or should we barely re-define the meaning of real?

Unlike all the other impacts and consequences of the ICT revolution, this question has not become a topic of cliché conversation. This mélange of the real (or what we still think of real) and the virtual on humans has not been really addressed neither by those claiming to study globalization nor by anyone else for that matter. And yet, for what it’s worth, the record might be worth reviewing. Putting aside the early inventions of Sir Graham Bell, I suppose it all started with cell phones which only ten years ago were strongly suspected of giving brain cancer and were thus used with caution. Even in the absence of any health related concerns, these awkward apparatuses used to simply warm up too much to become addictive for most of us even most heat-in-the-ear-resistant creatures. Then came the ever-improving versions of cell phones (for many of us working people replacing home lines), msn messenger, skype, and finally the ultimate privacy-denying device – the blackberry. In parallel with this, online social, dating and professional tools have also flourished.

Probably not many of under 30-40 can honestly say to have never experimented with skype or messenger, not to mention the principal culprit – email. I have to admit, I obviously do use and abuse email and in enormous quantities and have come to accept it as the necessary evil. Ask yourself however, how many days have you passed in the office when at the end of what seems like a marathon without amphetamines, when at the end of the day you wonder what has happened between 9 and whatever the lucky hour that you finally pressed the ‘shut down’ button? Ask yourself also, what portion of the communication you have transmitted and received today, yesterday or the day before has been productive? Adam Gopnik, a New Yorker journalist, pointedly notes in his recent novel the rise of

“..a whole new class of communication that are defined as incomplete in advance of their delivery…Every device that has evolved from the telegram shares the same character. E-mails end with a suggestion of a phone call (‘Anyway, let’s meet and/or talk soon’), faxes with a request for email, answering machine with a request for a fax. All are devices of perpetually suspended communication.”

I don’t know about you, but I find more truth than humour in his observation. If you are still not convinced, please consider the following fact, which I myself I am also not sure whether to classify in the category of comedy or tragedy. According to an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal, 18% of respondents of poll admitted to reading their emails in the bathroom. I could never really understand newspaper reading in the bathroom, but email?!!

At the same time, all kinds of psychologist and life coaches are falling over each other to help us get on with our lives, having written boxes worth on ‘literature’ on time management (read here: dealing with the INBOX). In principle, inbox management seems simple for most of us who can find the delete button. Yet even this theoretically simple step appears to be a nothing-but-obvious self-questioning of whether to trash the received emails (which may contain tasks and requests I have not yet followed up) or deleting the no less precious emails proving that you have indeed I have been overworked and have tried to reply to all the emails, both useful and useless.

What about all the other ICT tools that have recently boomed further validating the flat world theory - the LinkedIns, Facebooks, Plaxos, and Second Lifes of our world, among many others. At first, I ignored the occasional request to join Plaxo, LinkedIn and others but I have to admit this resistance did not endure. For better or worse, I finally gave in. Since then, I am now plugged in not only to my work and personal accounts at all times, but I now also being spammed by email notifications and on top of it all, being pulled by sheer curiosity to have a daily ‘facebook check’ (okay, I confess … 3 times a day !). As if my regularly over-flowing inbox which regularly threatens me to stop sending emails unless I trash emails was not enough.

Apparently not. After all, you can really miss serious news if you leave your facebook page unmonitored for too long – one of my facebook friends went from single to married in 3 days, including the intermediate stage of being engaged and the finally the last stage – ‘it’s complicated’. No, he does not live in Las Vegas. Besides the addiction element, there is the guilt trip aspect as well – it is someone’s birthday, they have posted it for you to know it since they know you will surely forget to wish them. So, not only do you know but they know that you know. As if Birthday Alarm could not remain the master of that domain. And yet, for all the ‘faults’ of facebook, I would be too much of a hypocrite not to admit its addictive nature and its usefulness for being connected to dispersed contacts across the world.

What about blackberry and the latest and trendiest Second Life? Allow me to offer you my assessment of the first: a semi-useful, semi-destructive spamming device, which effectively reduces the attention spam of an adult to 2 minutes and reduces their basic politeness to nothing. Not only that, but as you might have noticed if you have clients or superiors equipped - or maybe I should say ‘armed’ with this device - their messages normally do not come with greetings, thanks you’s or sincerely yours, let alone other content useful details. Not to mention the fact that they come at all hours of the day given that the clients, the bosses and loved one increasingly find themselves in a different time zone then your dear self.

Thanks to the proliferation of blackberry and the increasing acceptance of the concise, to the point blackberry messages that effectively can be summed up as: just do it. (thank you Nike), I think we miss the point of it all in the midst of all the daily urgencies. My personal favourite: I need this by cob (close of business) today. I often wonder to myself: is the blackberry empowering its users to express urgencies that were hereto known or find urgencies hereto not defined as such? I also often wonder if the people on the sending end realize how those on the receiving end feel. I have to admit, sometimes I can’t help but think of myself as a sort of a glorified secretary, a-not-yet-automated answering machine. All in all, an intelligent (or so I hope) blackberry responding robot.

What about messaging and texting outside the professional context? Electronic gadgets supporters say that sms and emails are intrusive – funny our bosses never seem to think so. For me, this is a puzzling, not to say outright ridiculous idea. Why would a friend be afraid to ‘intrude’ on a Saturday afternoon? After all, what are we supposed to be doing on weekends than spend time with friends? Personally, I do not recall particularly receiving texts at all the weird hours of the morning, so the whole intruding theory is bypassing me entirely. What is intruding, or rather annoying, is the following sequence:

Friend: do you want to get together today;
me: sure, what do you have in mind?
friend: café x at location y?
me: I can meet at 4 but at the café across town
friend: 4.30 is better for me, etc. etc.

I have seen this kind of a dialogue continue for half an hour or more. Length of time required to sort out this conundrum over the phone: 30 seconds. Personally, I remain, except for rare occasions, yet to be convinced of the usefulness of sms as opposed to the ‘normal’ old-fashioned phone call. But, next time I have a funny thought during the funeral of a friends’ relative, I will make sure to be discreet and send them an sms, as opposed to wait until after.

Last but not least – Second Life. Second Life – for those of you yet unfamiliar (where have you been for the last 2 months by the way?!) is a downloadable programme enabling its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other in a structured environment. I would argue that before Second Life, we, as a society, have been merely standing at the door leading to the Virtual World. After Second Life, figuring out which world we are living in and what the distinctions between the virtual and the real are, is becoming increasingly difficult. Consider the concept with the full somberness it deserves: we are paying to interact with others on the computer.

And not only that, we are now suing each other on Second Life. No, this is not some sort of a twisted joke. A first law suit related to Second Life has been registered last year, in which a Pennsylvania lawyer was suing the publisher of the rapidly growing online world Second Life, alleging that Second Life has unfairly confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of his virtual land and other property, which he has previously bought. Note the key terms here: bought virtual property, suing company for confiscating his virtual property. Unfairness and even breach of law is being invoked. ¨Perhaps I am simple minded but I have one recommendation to our plaintiff here: get a life. Clarification: a real life.
So here I am in the midst of our wonderfully electronic powered world and I am forced to conclude the following - the day when we are, or at least some among us, are running away from technology might not be far away. Personally, I might myself one day in not too distant future be tempted to desert the virtual world. No, I would not dare cut myself off completely for I couldn’t take the risk of not being able to reach anyone. After all, if I am not on facebook, LinkedIn, plaxo, while at the same time being logged in on msn messenger and skype and patiently waiting for a vibration of my cell phone (which these days only vibrates with messages but rarely rings with actual calls), I might simply risk being forgotten. You might think I exaggerate, but try it.