Virtual Life May Be Perfect, But It’S Lonely

Sometimes I forget not everyone has voice messaging service.

Then, I’ll try to connect with some of my older friends; their phone rings away and I’m piqued they don’t have an answering machine where I can leave cheery little I’m-thinking-of-you messages. I stick a Post-It note on my desk and try to remember to call them later. It would be easier to just talk to their machine, then move on and they would know I’d thought about them. But that’s the problem with technology: it lets us settle for parts of life that don’t have any integrity. Dropping a few sentences onto a machine just isn’t the same as chatting with my friends in a back-and-forth conversation.

I’m not inclined to crusade against technology; my lifestyle is fully wired. But still, I have apprehensions and suspicions that are only reinforced by technological inventions. I’ve been reading a lot about research projects at the virtual reality labs at MIT and the University of Washington and I’m suitably in awe of the sorts of things the techies are producing.

At MIT, researchers have put computer chips in shoes. The chips will identify us to the security systems at our workplaces and the doors at home will unlock and lock as we approach and leave, since the chips will talk to the doorknobs, which also have chips.

The chips will know our daily schedule and whisper it into our ears or project it onto our eyeglass frames (the researchers are still working on the details, but the technology exists). We can call without a cell phone; again eyeglasses, which at this point are goggles, can take care of that. Researchers walk the halls of MIT talking to their goggles and, there, it seems normal.

At UW in Seattle, techies are creating virtual- reality rooms where blind people can virtually see and paraplegics can virtually jog along a country road, smelling newly mown hay and feeling the air temperatures change as they jog down into dips and back up the hills. These are good things.

But I also know that while the motives are admirable, the marketers of technology always look for masses. The prospect of people who use wheelchairs having the opportunity to know what it’s like to jog in the country is very different from couch potatoes calling virtual jogging their exercise program. Technology has already made it too easy to call the people in chat rooms friends, to order pizza, books, music and clothes online instead of spending the evening in our real communities, to go to theme parks with man-made lakes and call it a vacation at the beach.

Yes, technology makes life easier, quicker and efficient. It’s also predictable, safe, and limiting.

A couple of years ago I drove to Jasper National Park in northern Alberta via Edmonton and stopped at West Edmonton Mall where theme park meets total shopping experience.

Hundreds of people make this shopping mecca their vacation destination, a place where they can eat, stay at a hotel with themed rooms, shop and play at the computer-driven amusement and water parks.

Vacationers have their breath ripped from their chests on the Drop of Doom, and they lounge on the concrete beside the giant wave pool. On cloudless days sunlight streams through the atrium. A skywalk lets shoppers stand and gaze across the swimmers lying on chaise lounges or on their beach towels just out of reach of the waves. Mostly pale-skinned after a winter of low light on the Alberta and Saskatchewan prairies, the swimmers looked like seals sunning on the beach waiting for the tide to come in.

It didn’t and it won’t here, since the machine-made waves are identical. No chance of getting wet except on purpose. No chilling winds. No sunburn. No possibility of spotting a gray whale spouting offshore.

In Jasper, I hiked through two days of driving snowstorms. My boots were wet. My tent was wet. My sleeping bag was wet. I was cold. It was not a peak experience.

But it was a real experience. The chance of serendipity was ever-present and the week was not without its moments.

Real moments, though, aren’t always easy or convenient or even fun.

By next year, we’ll probably see a few people wearing those computer goggles at the mall or in our neighborhoods. For the sake of status.

Then, they’ll disappear from public view. Because a whole lot of people will stay at home ordering in everything from food to furniture, talking away to strangers on other continents, playing mind games and having sex, all virtually and all alone.

All the experiences will be sure things, thanks to technology. There we’ll sit with goggles murmuring into our ears, waving in our virtual- reality gloves to summon up whatever it is we want at the moment. Disconnected from other people by technology designed to expand our lives.