When Virtual Becomes Real...
Scenario 1:
Sitting in front of a littered desk is a man in his thirties. He looks attentively at a computer screen with a cigarette so habitually held in his hand that he
doesn't seem to notice it is there. The colors on his clothing hide in an earthy gray obviously due to lack of washing. And his hair is long and unkempt for a
butch standard every time I visit the family. In his small computer room are crammed a single bed, an old wooden desk, an arm chair, and smoke.
He has a four-year-old daughter and a wife. He is one of two sons of a couple who, despite their old age and high blood pressure, cooks for him and his family
and does most of the cleaning around the house. The son doesn't know how to cook, nor does he want to learn how to cook. He seems not worried about his future
life when the couple is gone. He must be rich! You'd say. No, he can barely support him and his family, though he's bodily healthy and able. He owns and manages a small computer service business, which only earns him a little more than a
thousand yuan per month. His wife doesn't have stable jobs.
You might wonder why he doesn't try to expand his business, buy a house, and live on his own. It is time to repay his parents and provide a better home for his
daughter after all, now that he's reached an age "to be independent". And you
might have come up with a guess that tallies with what I'm going to tell you: He's addictive to the Internet. To say it more accurately, he is addictive to online games. After more than ten years of playing with those virtual men and women in a planned virtual setting, he is found impatient, impetuous, and impaired
to be fully aware of the real world he physically lives in and of the real people he comes in contact with. The virtual has changed him in a way so profound that it freezes his mind, immobilize it, and control it.
Scenario 2:
A short-haired young woman stares at a blue computer screen, typing as fast as she can, and occasionally stops to open up an IE window and logon to a specialized online dictionary for a word she doesn't know. Behind her is a wall of books;
on her left is a window with security bars and on her right a locked door that
leads her, when opened, to a living room where she usually stays for less than two hours a day. But today is different. She has to finish up her work earlier
because in the afternoon she has a friend coming to see her from a faraway town
in Zhejiang.
She is excited, as she always was on such rare but true occasions, and she marvels at the fact that she is actually going to meet, among some others, this friend who was once so obscure to her when they first "met" six years ago, that he only resembled a user name, Panpanpan. She admired his creative English writing skills and his enthusiasm for learning English all by himself.
It was not until a day came when she talked on the phone with one of the user names, Canuck, and tasted the salt of her nervous and exciting sweat rolling down
from her forehead, that she realized behind these user names were real people like herself. A few years later in this virtual world she began to avail herself
of her language skills to earn wages, most of which remain invisible but substantial to help her to be financially independent in her physical confinement.
Panpanpan, like David, Soulkey, Tim, and some other few, now stands in front of
her as a physical being, showing her every detail of his facial expressions, speaking tones, and gestures rather than words on the screen. His visit reminds her of other people of whom she first came to know online and with whom she met later in real life, of times when she was thanked for accepting an online work assignment, and of opportunities from the Internet that gave her much confidence and hope, which, like sunshine, shine on proud faces of her parents.
The virtual has changed her in a way so significant that it is infused into her
life and her soul to make her, and everyone else who's benefited from the Internet, freer than she would be in the real world.
Epilog: It is a matter of choice to control or to be controlled, as the Internet
continues to contribute to making of a world village where virtual is real.
Jenny
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