Just A Thought - Disappearing Into the Net

This Project Agora sounds like Techno-heaven. You could almost never leave your room except for classes and perhaps to eat. But you could probably order pizza by phone and I have seen a McDonalds where you can FAX an order, but I don't think they deliver. Surely there will be classes that are all computer driven... or perhaps a professor can e-mail his/her lecture and you can read it at your leisure.

I wish these were merely sparse examples or daydreams, but not so. I am told that when AT&T has a building whose lease comes due, they sell or tear down the building and send their people home to work. AT&T will even pay for an addition to your house, give you a computer and a cellular phone and the works and you can work in your house. Another company has what is now called "virtual offices" where you just come into a cubicle, plug in your lap-top, set up your cellular phone; what supplies you need are there for you. Then when your work is done, you "un-plug", hit the road, and the leave the "virtual office" for the next person.

Then there are the "Mudders." These are people who play a kind of dungeons and dragons game simultaneously with people all over the country. The game is so addictive that persons who "mud" can spend days, their "virtual lives" mudding and nothing else. One of my colleagues says that she can spot a "mudder" by the look in their eyes; that vacant, far-away look that indicates they are in a "different reality" than the rest of us.

All of these stories are part of the BC's director's "virtual community." Here lies my uneasiness with all the techno-heaven scenarios. The last thing any of us need, be they BC resident students, AT&T workers, or addicted "mudders," is any reason or technology that isolates us, eliminates the need to interact with one another in person. "Virtual community" is no substitute for interpersonal relationships. What would be the harm if students had to actually "walk" to a professor's office and "hand in" a paper and perhaps "talk to each other!" Do we need to give every student the opportunity to channel surf, mud, e-mail and have voice mail? Do we have any idea, as we compete for the most turned on, wired in "virtual community" what sort of a monster we are creating. We are in danger of not creating, but destroying, community, virtual or otherwise, on campus, in the workplace, or wherever.

I know, I know. It is me, the old fuddy-duddy at it again. No, I am not anti-technology and I would be lost without my Apple IIGS (so I'm an antique lover) and I do e-mail; but from the lab at WPI. I do believe that we must guard against making the electronic highway our sole place of existence, that breaking bread together over lunch is more intimate that any e-mail, and that we were created to love one another, not just leave each other messages on our voice mail. Mixing it up is fine. But to become a prisoner of the "virtual community" is to lost the humanity that gives us the meaning and fulfillment we were meant to have.