Real or not Real?

Great post Tao.

SL is like the big pretend world where folks come in and take on roles and do things that they can't do in RL. But like the toys we play with as kids, when we played house or played cops and robbers, the 'toys' in our Second lives are shaped and created by real people, created to cater to our fantasy life.

It also doesn't mean that the relationships I form with my fellow second lifers isn't real. I can still play pretend with others, and still be friends with them after I press the log out button, the friendship is real. (I hope so! Considering that the internet makes it so easy to lie and pretend to be someone we are not. Can you imagine falling in love with someone you met online, only to find out the hard way he/she are not what they've seem?)

Just take note to not to get carried away. But how get carried away is getting carried away?

SL is to some extent a giant dollhouse, unimaginable in the days of Barbie's inception, but real in the adult sense, now. Many will come and go with little impact on their RL lives, but some marry in all worlds on account of relationships forged in this one, and others learn lessons here that could not be found elsewhere, in other eras. And of course, some people make money here: feed themselves and earn extra slops.

All my thoughts are virtual.

I virtually think.

Well, I don't think that these to statements can be derived from each other. If you think then it might still be "real" thinking but the contents might still be virtual (whatever that means, maybe all thoughts can be seen as sort of virtual). You can maybe see a computer as a thinker which creates virtual things/thoughts but the computing (thinking) is still real.

Maybe I am getting too much into details here but I am just trying to procrastinate from work

You know, along those lines of thinking, when you pick up the phone and call someone, you aren't actually having a conversation with them. The sound waves of your voice are vibrating a microphone diaphragm, which converts the sound into electrical impulses, which travel through xx miles of wire and are turned back into sound by vibrating a speaker diaphragm on the other party's phone, and when you're done, you "quit" the conversation by hanging up the phone.

What you hear coming out of the telephone earpiece is NOT your friend's voice, but a recreation of it. For that matter, the same goes when you listen to your favorite artist's new CD. It's not his or her voice, it's a digital recreation of it.

Does that make that conversation, or that song, any less real, or invalidate it in any way?

Relationships in SL are simply another means of contact.

P2

Why is it that your posts are always the best in a thread?