The end of human interaction as we know it?

Living on the Web As stated in one of the other "future sites", I am also a believer of the future internet sites providing a much more interactive experience than what we see today, and more imporantly, have a much larger impact on our identities, socail interaction and life patterns than what we know as a given today. We all have heard of or maybe even tried the known virtual reality tools of today. With advanced software connected to a helmet and some "gloves", we are able to move in virtual space and perform virtual actions in this world. Though this is not exactly what I predict, it is the closest I can get to describing the ways of interacting through these future sites. So, we can imagine this type virtual world in each our internet sites and even the foundation of the web. Suddenly, an internet site is a world we can enter rather than a site to look at with minimum interaction. Analogue to the traditional museum experience, why not walk through the halls of the Van Gogh museum virtually, but with such a quality and appeal to all senses, that it could replace the experience of actually being there?

These sites will appeal to all our senses (still can't figure out the sense of taste, though that is probably more my lack of imagination) and they will be encompass a virtual reality World that would make the user not only a visitor, but a co-producer of the expericne and therefore enabling him/her to experience the sites in a completely different way and furthermore even develop the sites.

Possibilities and Consequences: To a large extent, this type of internet sites would remove many geographical borders and boundaries. We already know of conference calls and video conferencing from our professional life, giving us two dimensional either sounds or image or combinations of both. The future sites will enable us to conduct meetings in a (virtual) meeting room and experience to be in the same room during the meeting, thereby experiencing not only the sound and image but it will completely resemble the experience of being there in person. Through such a virtual media, extended to the fullest, one could imagine a normal day that would start with participating in a meditation session in India in the morning, one could take a walk on the Chinese wall in the early afternoon, have a meeting in NY in the late afternoon, go to the Opera in Vienna during the evening, and go out with friends from all over the world at night. However, all this would be done through the future internet site and not by physically travelling the world.

Having the thoughts of McLuan in mind, this type of malstroem could have huge effects on our society, social interaction and ways of communication, if we are not able to successfully understand the patterns and attempt to control it. The future sites I am drawing out now could make any type of human interaction obsolete. Why even leave your house in the morning? Why meet anybody at all? It may remove the need for office space, but also the need for social interaction? Where are the emotions if we can live our lives completely on-line?