virtual vs. reality

I'm doing a group presentation on Monday and my part is on blogs and social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. I'm reading a book for it called Interpersonal Divide: The Search For Community in a Technological Age by Michael Bugeja that I'm really excited about. Here's a short description of his idea from the preface (which is how far I've gotten):

"The phrase interpersonal divide concerns the social gap that develops when individuals misperceive reality because of media overconsumption and misinterpret others because of technology overuse. This book analyzes "the interpersonal divide" from different vantage points...detailing the overselling of media and technology and the impact on our behavior when we spend too much time in virtual rather than real habitats."

For my Critical Theory class I'm reading Kalle Lasn's (of Adbusters fame) Culture Jam: How to reverse america's suicidal consumer binge - and why we must. Here's something interesting that he says that is similar to Bugeja's point:

"But I wondered how they'd score on a 'reality index' - which I define as the ratio of time spend in a virtual versus a 'real' environment. The measurement is easy enough to calculate. Jot down in a notebook the number of times a day you laugh at real jokes with real people in real situations against the number of times you laugh at media-generated joke, the amount of sex you have against the amount of sex you watch, and so on."

Very interesting.