Whenever I hear "real life" or "real world" I almost have to stop and question what the person is actually referring to when they say this. Why indeed do we feel the need to have "real life" as a term? And indeed, what is this "real life" everyone is going on about?
I have decided of late that I do not like the term "real life" or "real world".
Now I'm going to place some boundaries on the particular usage of "real life" and/or "real world" that I will be covering in this entry. I am going to be discussing this term in relation to the divide between interactions within "cyberspace" and interactions located within geographical space, or tangible physically existent space.
The usage of the terms generally implies a kind of divide between virtual worlds and the physical world. The term can be used to devalue interaction in web based mediums, used with disdain for people who interact with people on the net who have never met in "real life". But it doesn't necessarily have to be used with malice, it can be used just in passing. It is a common part of our everyday speech. But it is a loaded part of our speech - it comes with a series of assumptions that we make about the internet that I fear we do not stop to question.
I guess we have to ask ourselves what we deem to be real. I think we can all agree that the monitor you are reading this through is real. You can see it, you can touch it, you can relocate it, you can physically interact with it. Same as your mouse, keyboard, phone, bed, etc etc. I would suspect that many of your friends you would view as real. They exist, you can touch them, speak with them, see them with your eyes, you can interact with them as if they are objects located physically around you.
So anything that you can touch, see, smell, hear, taste is real, yeah?
Now I'm going to move into the slightly more abstract. Are your emotions real? Is love, jealousy, happiness, sadness and anger, real? Even though you cannot feel them through your senses, they are something that is there, something that is real.
Again, I would suspect yes, though feel free to disagree.
Having accounted for that...I have a proposition for you, my dear readers. I propose that cyberspace, although not physically tangible is a valid means to experience a certain kind of life. This type of life, I would argue, is no less real to those experiencing it than those who are of the opinion that real life is mostly or only present in the physical world.
Alas, I cannot touch the person on the other end of my MSN conversation, nor can I smell or taste them. But these days I can see and hear them. They are real people, my conversations actually happen, and the consequences of these interactions spill over into my face to face interactions. Same with Facebook - the interactions has on that website affect people in a very real way. Some would argue that social networking has led to suicide - one of the most real consequences of cyberspace.
"What about more anonymous interactions?" Many would now seek to argue. "What about World of Warcraft, that's not a real world, that's make believe."
Alas, I would also argue that online gaming is very much a real world. What is not real about interacting with other humans in an imagined world. Children do it all the time, in fact they are encouraged to (On a side note, if you are interested in childrens' interactions with cyberspace this blog entry is good). They play in imagined worlds, pretending to be something/someone else. This is much of what online gaming is - playing in an imagined world. You can feel anger at interactions, you can make friends who are not physically tangible, but are very real in the sense of how they make you feel.
Furthermore I would argue that by continuing to employ a discourse that implies a segregation between cyberspace and the physical world we continue to adopt a blind eye to the social problems that go had in hand with the reality of web based experiences.
I think recognition of cyberspace as an environment that is very real in both its interactions and its consequences is vital toward encouraging open and frank discussions about how to deal with social problems like cyberbullying. This, combined with an education of parents, teachers and academics of how social interactions occur in cyberspace, should provide us with the foundation to understand how cyberspace has changed the dimensions of social life forever, and what this means for society.
I shall leave you with a theory from William Isaac Thomas, famous American sociologist:
"If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences"
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