I’ve read this interesting story about the digital world and how it’s affecting our real world convictions. As an example, the article tells the story of a married man who plays Second Life and gets married to one of the characters (who is played by a real woman too), this begs the question of whether this guy is cheating on his wife or just playing an online game.

Also according to the article:

Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by Nick Yee, a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. More than a quarter of gamers said the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world, according to the survey, which was published in 2006 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press’s journal Presence. [Source”]

I find it very interesting that computers did not only change our lifestyle (ie eating infront of PC screens, paying bills online, online dating…etc) but also how we react to both external and internal stimulations. I think with life-like characters and life-like objects, one can have a whole life away from his/her real one only if he/she responded to all of that positively (ie as if everything was real). Take Second Life for example, it could be argued that it is real, and it could also be argued that it’s not, depending mainly on personal factors such as the level of involvement, closeness to the real world, substitution factor (does it substitute for something that is missing or insufficient?).

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