Living on-line

Internet is a wonderful thing. Really. I can pay my bills on-line, order food, buy on ebay, reading whatever I want to, writing on a blog for whoever will find me, learning, find new friends and dates too. You stay in the front of a computer connected to Internet and the world is yours. The knowledge you can acquire is amazing. The condition is to have medium Internet skills, a good knowledge of English, and your on-life is waiting for you.

One of the dangers of a life exclusively, or mostly, set on-line is the lack of basic human interaction. Why, you could ask, because you could make your "relationships" made on-line became at a certain respect a reality, through a video-call, for example, when you can effectively see who you are talking to. It's in a way similar to what's happening when seeing a movie, with the difference than you could now be an actor yourself. And, also, not less important, you can close the window if you want to.

You can spend hours and hours messaging on-line people, perhaps telling the same creepy story 100 times to 100 different people. You can call it an intense social life. You can find people with who to share different thoughts and interests, even at different corners of the world, with a low certainty to ever meet them in person. It could be rewarding, again, and you are free to call them "friends". Or to fall in love on-line after seeing one's picture, as the teens who are gathering pictures of favorites actors and hang them near their beds.

Sorry, but real-life relationships are more different. (fortunately) You call friends those you can rely on, that could be any time "on-line" (to be read available, ready) to help you, with whom to share a cup of coffee talking or not, but simply offering you a strong human presence. A conferece call it's very different of a real party or of a friends gathering. A virtual tour of a city - through pictures or short movies - could be the same for every place. You still don't know nothing about the smell of the streets or the sound of the voices.

In Japan, they created recently robots with a human appearance, able to answer with a human voice basic human requests. I'm not sure their system is not down when asked "How are you?", but I can bet they don't make any difference between the people who are addressing them. And they don't need to, because...they are robots.

From my own experience, I can say that the on-line environment, dating sites included, is full of people with a high degree of stupidity and aggressiveness and intolerance, with serious, hard to cure psychological troubles. I'm happy I never had the occasion to meet them in person. I'm already worried they are so many on planet Earth.

Of course, nothing is perfect, and in completely accidental circumstances, once in a century, you can find as well outstanding brainy people.

But still, everything is just an opportunity we still have to tackle with very basic human knowledge skills. Human brains projected extremely sophisticated tools, we are used to work with as they are appendix of our bodies. And without them, we could feel disabled. Every time you feel technically addict, try to close your eyes - a suggestion - and imagine a survival test in a simple world, without mobile phones, Internet, different machines. Are you still able, for example, to find a street only with a simple map? Or to talk with your neighbors? Or to write a letter to your real friends telling in a couple of sentences - not only disparate messaging-like words - how do you really feel (maybe happy, maybe sorry)? If yes, you are still alive.