virtually nowhere at all

I've got everything else happening in my life right now, so why not a little irony as well? I've spent all day writing about how we can use virtual reality to conduct experiments to find out what culture really is, thinking that simulations of reality have to be the answer to everything because, well, they're not that different to the real thing, and humans are, in ways that we'd perhaps rather not have to confront, big collections of fairly dumb automatons put together in clever ways, and that if we can just become comfortable enough with treating images of ourselves as the same thing as our authentic selves then some thorny problems -- massively overused air travel for one -- become a bit less of a death knell for the planet. And then one short phone call punctures my digital revelry with the news that there's some kin on the other side of the planet who is feeling exhausted, alone, terrified of losing someone he loves, perhaps a bit beyond coping. I can't go be with him right now, so I send an email. Pathetic. If I could embrace this technology and go pop into his living room as a digital presence, phosphorescence trickling across the face of a screen, or even a three-dimensional hologram shimmering before him, would that offer any kind of succor? I see him reach out for a hug only to flail arms through incorporeal fake flesh. There is no substitute for the body.