Virtual Reality

Today being Sunday, the newspaper had more material to read. The lead story in the Times Life pullout was about how internet has emerged as the new venue for social networking with Hi5, Friendster, MySpace, Ryze, LinkedIn and Orkut emerging as the leading websites to form communities in cyberworld. As I was reading the story, there was a statement, given by one of the interviewees, which caught my eyes – “I live alone and I have no real dependence on anyone.” Just to provide full context, this lady is hooked on to few online social networking sites and believes that it is one of the good things which have happened to her.

This was not the first time when I heard such a statement. It may be a coincidence that earlier statements, like this one, were also made by my female friends/aquaintances. It surprises me how people take their environment, in which they live, breathe and make such statements, for granted. I know that most of the people don’t bother for the upkeep of their environment, but slowly, people have started behaving as if it doesn’t exist or they really don’t need it. I don’t know how one, in one’s right senses, can ever proclaim that one is not dependent on anyone else? Especially today, when most of us live in a capitalistic world where one is specialized in a skill and buys other goods/services in exchange, which forces people to be more interdependent on each other. Aren’t we dependent on farmers to grow grains, vegetables and fruits for our consumption? Aren’t we dependent on milk-cooperatives for our milk supply? Aren’t we dependent on masons and carpenters for the construction of our home? Yes, we may end up buying these goods/services in exchange of providing ours, but at the end of the day, we can’t live without them. Money can buy something only if it is available in the market, it can’t buy if it doesn’t exist.

I find it strange when people say that they have no real dependence on anyone, but they spend considerable time doing social networking online. The fact that this lady is hooked on to these sites, tells me that she craves for interaction with other human beings, though, it may be easier for her, and may be for many more, to interact with others in a virtual world rather than in real world. While it is true that internet has made the distance disappear and one can easily interact with someone sitting half way down the globe, I still believe that real world interaction is far more fulfilling and gratifying.

Though, I wonder if the huge increase in the membership of these online communities is a message to all of us about our behaviour in real world :-?