Virtue-ality...

More than often I catch myself contemplating how much technology is taking over our lives... yeah, I know... That's a pretty "beaten to death" subject... bear with me... I look back to about 10 years ago when my parents gave me internet connection as a birthday present... Dial-up connection, paid by the amount of hours used in a month, etc... I remember so clearly, that first moment, first connection (the deafining sound of the dial-up connection lol)... I was in front of our desktop with my mom and we didn't have a clue as what to do next... we finally got into Altavista... lol and started looking for stuff... we found some chat rooms and that was it, I was hooked... My life as I knew it would never be the same again... My mom got addicted too, it began a war at home to see who got to stay logged in longer... Her in a 30/40 years old chatroom, me in a 15/20 years old chat room... It was a time when trusting the person talking to you was NOT farfetched, hardly anyone had internet... I made good friends at the time, so did my mom... she even had a bimonthly BBQ with her chatroom friends... once I went with her and was sitting at the "kids" table when i realized the boy i was talking to was my long time chatroom friend "Dillinger"... It was hilarious, his mom was a good friend of my mom... My chatroom name at the time??? it was: "L@L@" groundbreaking no??? lol A decade later and that new world is not so new anymore... I have been through mIRC, ICQ, virtual bfs and so much more... This virtual world only keeps getting bigger and bigger, expanding and evolving... But, some things haven't changed that much... The reasons why we log into it... we come here to escape, find people like us, find ourselves, hide, show who you are, get attention, show what you can do... I know there is a technological need as well, of course... However, the main needs are still very psychological and that is, in my humble opinion, what keeps this world alive... every new internet "thing" has been built to fullfil some or any of those needs... Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Flickr, Pollsb, Blogger... The needs are still there and the internet has the job to try to fullfil them... Despite all that, I wonder... Is there going to be a time when we will trade in the real life contacts for MSN ones??? That question came to me while in class yesterday, when I found myself chatting on MSN with a classmate who was sitting right behind me... I know, that's not an uncommon thing... but, I have to admit, the sensation was a bit weird... I felt strange, as if I was being part of a game or something... I have no idea how to describe it... all I know is that, that little weird feeling got me to write this post... See you guys next time... maybe with some cool news...