There is no "virtual reality." From the perspective of daily experience,
life is never "almost," or "nearly," real. Fantasies and imaginings are
titillating experiences whether they are fueled by literature, the cinema,
or an online forum. And yet, every day, someone writes another article
about the glories of the new "virtual reality" as if experience came in
degrees that could be measured against some external yardstick of the
real. Crash a plane in a computerized flight program and the crash
does nothing but end the sequence, perhaps with the message: "Try
again, ace?" There is nothing "virtual" about such programs, their dis-
tance from experience is manifest and absolute. Crash a plane in the
real world of passenger-carrying airplanes and there is only the sound
of explosion, of crumpling metal and screaming people.

Reality is what happens to us as individuals and between us as a
people. Fantasy is a means by which we work out the problems of our
physical and emotional lives. These tools can be extremely powerful
vehicles for understanding life's events. But that does not mean they
approximate, equal or replace the lived reality that is our world. No
matter how life-like or sophisticated a program may be, simulations are
never more than shadowy approximations of the real. Even the most
realistic movie or the most compelling book, early forms of "virtual
reality," only inform but do not alter or replace the experience of mun-
dane experience. Despite its popularity, the term "virtual reality" does

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