Virtual Existence

The advent of technologies especially internet have challenged the very human relationships, the depth and warmth of a true relationship are lost. Everything is governed by technology and we are engulfed by technologies thus our very existence is challenged and we no longer  exist in the real world, rather we live in technology to be precise we live in a virtual world.

In this regard if the age-old story of scholar and boatman were to be retold to the younger generation, to reach the message home we need to fine-tune the story to the current era and perhaps it should be retold in the following format;

A scholar asked a boatman to row him across the river. The journey was long and slow. The scholar was bored. "Boatman," he called out, "Let's have a conversation." Suggesting a topic of special interest to himself, he asked, "Are you there in Facebook or in twitter?"

"No," said the boatman, "I've no use for those tools."

"Too bad," said the scholar, "If you don’t have an account in Facebook or in Twitter you don’t really exist at all. It's so essential to remain connected with your friends as well as to find your old friends."………………………………………………….

A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects.

The boon and at the same time the curse of the time is internet. We all are so addicted to that and we can’t easily get away from it.  Our very existence is challenged and we don’t really exist rather we exist in the virtual world. We spend most of our time in the virtual world, making friends, chatting with them and everything is turned to be virtual for us and we don’t really know what is really happening out there.

Our horizon is reduced to what the internet can offer us and we happy live there in the virtual world like a Koop-Mandook - a frog in the well (pond) because we think that the virtual world we live in is the real world. 

Internet is called virtual world because when we login into Facebook or skype we chat with our online friends for hours and hours but when they come face to face perhaps they we don’t talk to each other at all. We have long list of friends in our social networking sites and how many of them are really our friends. Often we keep adding people whom we may not really know because we want others to see our long friend list.

Recently there was a thought provoking cartoon appeared in Facebook it is a funeral and the seats arranged are left vacant seeing that a lady comments “He had over 200 friends on Facebook, I thought it would have more people over here.”

It is high time that we come out of the shell of virtual world and the fantasies that can offer us and start living in the real world making real and last human relationship with people who are there in and around us.