Virtual Is Not the Opposite of Real! We’re Using the Wrong Word, Causing Real Damage
Algorithm, virtual, and automation. Three words we use incorrectly. Three videos, one per word. Today: why we’re wrong to use “virtual.”
Newspapers keep writing: real world versus virtual world. As if they were two separate places. Completely wrong. Here’s how it actually works.
The real world is the big container. Inside it, two spaces: the physical world and the digital world. Physical is where we move, touch, look each other in the face. Digital is where we write, work, buy, argue, fall in love. Two different spaces, but both produce real consequences. Both are real.
If I’m on a video call and we make decisions, those decisions are real. You can’t touch them with your hands, but you touch them with the facts. If I buy something online, the money is gone for real. If someone insults me in a chat, it lands, it hurts, it stays. Especially if you are young. None of this is virtual. It’s digital. And it’s absolutely real.
The virtual world is something else. It sits outside the real world. It uses digital technology as a tool, but produces no effects beyond itself. In a videogame you kill a character, it dies, another respawns. No consequences off-screen.
But we use “virtual” for everything online, and this can cause damage. A kid bullies a classmate in a group chat. Headlines say: “bullying in the virtual world.” That word cuts the weight in half. Kids believe it. They think certain things are okay because it’s the virtual world. It doesn’t count. Except it counts exactly like the physical world, because it’s digital, and digital is part of the real world.
Every time we say “virtual” when we should say “digital,” we’re removing weight from something that carries real weight. What do you think?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC