--- On Thu, 8/13/09, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> You're leaving out many crucial differences. Virtual
> friends interact with you; fantasies do not. Virtual
> friends of long standing can become internalized parts of
> your self. (What would Mado think? Oh, actually
> she'd be right, I should alter that. I should ask Jordan how
> to solve this. He'll ask me X. Oh, damn, that's
> the fucking answer.)
>
> And lastly, virtual friends can become friends in the 3-D
> world. Doug and I had a virtual relation for 10 years
> before I ever met him. Now I know and cherish his wife
> and his child and have dinner at their home every few months
> -- as old fashioned a relationship as one could imagine.
[WS:] But in the end, it is the face to face contact that matters - not virtuality. Virtual relations live in the reflected light of actual life and only inasmuch as they are rooted in that actual life. Without face to face interaction - virtual interaction would be incomprehensible "nothing - like "the ocean" in Lem's novel "Solaris". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel)
The analogy is far reaching - humans cannot communicate with an alien life form and the only interaction with it is re-experiencing their own life experiences. The same applies to virtual forms of interaction - it is possible only as re-enactment of real life interactions.
Wojtek