Imaginary reality

Our world is once cement is dissolved in a realm of intangibility.

And 'interesting to consider the ways in which the computer and the Internet have changed our lives. Tasks that once required visiting certain locations and interact with specific people, such as booking a holiday or accessing your bank account can be made online. Often when you do go somewhere to talk to an assistant end up performing the online business the same way you could do alone.

Online banking intrigues me a lot. We almost lost the need for real money. I paid with a check that goes directly into my bank account. I then log into my bank account via the Internet and transfer money to my savings account, which is at another bank to my regular account. If I ever need money from my savings account I log in and transfer back to my main account. I never gave a''real money in this bank, nor have I received any from them. Most of my purchases these days are made using Eftpos. I almost never actually cold, hard, real cash on me. In practice the things we buy with the data in those days. Numbers hover around the place, being added and subtracted from a variable to another. There is probably still somewhere real money to be couriered between banks in general but I never see it. I wonder how long it will be until they actually are not technically money.

The stock market in the same way intrigues me. I've never been involved myself, but I think it is the equivalent of professional gambling. People make a point that some stocks go up or down, and both gain or lose money depending on whether their bet pans out. What interests me most is that basically it is an economic reality built around the concept of buying and selling absolutely nothing. What precisely are theoretically 'parts' of a given society. Bit collect enough and you could own the company. Actually moved some numbers that represent money and get some numbers that represent the stocks. When these numbers get bigger numbers sell them again, and receive in exchange some numbers more money. There is usually no real product or money (which you're holding), seen in this whole process.

There are moral dilemmas, now that did not exist before. For example, piracy is really stealing? All that takes is a copy of the data. Nobody really loses something tangible out of the theft. Stealing a purse mean that someone no longer grant them. Stealing a car means that someone must take the bus for a while '. Stealing a computer program means that another copy just 'magic' comes into existence and becomes yours. The futuristic super-villains of the past, countries held hostage with real weapons of enormous size, often floating in space. The reality of our modern world is that it could hold a nation hostage, with no more 'real' of a copy a few files from one computer secure.

Virtual reality may not have eventuated in a realistic virtual worlds, but in reality is becoming a 'virtual'. It may not be problematic or even surprising, but I find it interesting that hard cash, cold hard facts are anything but fast becoming tangible.