Who really needs people

I can see a time in the future when living your life on the internet will become a real possibility. I have been hearing for years that people have been buying Christmas gifts on the internet, but I personally never thought that I would. I always thought that doing something like that was not giving of myself enough, but we seem to be losing daily time as the years go by. I can see that telepresence is becoming more of an issue with me as well as some of the instances show in this chapter. Telepresence does something for us that we seem to want. It takes the personal out of dealing with sales people. We all dislike (maybe that's too gentle of a word) how we get pressure from sales people when we go into a store. through the internet, we have escaped this pressure. We use the internet to find dates, buy furniture, or even buy cars. We use it to put a barrier between us and reality and I think that that becomes the problem. Dreyfus is certainly concerned that we are becoming disembodied by not actually experiencing life. When you go into that store and get bothered by the sales person, you have a physical reaction. You're happy that someone is helping you, you are bothered by their presence, you might fall in love with them at first sight. Whatever happens, you had a physical reaction. When telepresence becomes embedded in your life, you begin to lose those sensations. Some of them might be uncomfortable, but most will give you pleasure in some way because I think the human body desires physical interaction that a computer screen can never truly give you. People that you meet are real. People on the internet are imaginary friends. Do you really know them?