Today’s readings included the article called “Who Am We?” by Sherry Turkle, which I found to be pretty disturbing. I just realized that the article was published in 1996, so obviously the world hasn’t imploded yet….. However it still scares me to think about what our future will be like as a society with all of this virtual reality. I just worry about how personal relationships in what the author refers to as “RL” or real life, will be changed if people stop interacting face to face and keep having these online relationships with personalities that are being made up as they go along. I don’t think that it will help someone who is anti-social to come out of their shell; in fact I think it will have the opposite effect. The more time people are spending alone in their houses pretending to be someone else, the harder it will be for them to actually function in society. There are social skills that you need in life that you cannot learn without interaction with real live humans.
Is our future doomed to consist of people sitting in their homes ordering virtual dinner for their virtual date while watching other people live their lives on reality television? I sure hope not.
The Creators' Conscience 
BW said
You raise an interesting point about coming out of one’s shell. Perhaps an example from the classroom can be of some help in thinking about this some more.
In class, I often ask students to discuss topics via online chat–we meet in a chat space in groups of 4 or 5 and talk about the readings in terms of a prepared prompt. We do this a few times throughout the semester, and what I have found–in all of my classes in which I have done this–is that students who at the beginning of class were shy about speaking up, by the end of the class they talk quite freely. What is happening is that the student is gaining confidence in their voice via chat and that confidence is translating into RL discussions.
The question of how effective online spaces will be for creating RL learners is one that we are still considering. . . .