In the world which is entered by way of the computer people are often not what they seem; they may hide behind their screens and offer false descriptions of themselves. The boundaries between truth and fiction are hard to police in cyberspace - it could have been expressly made for tricksters, liars and fantasists. The moral anxiety this generates is as ancient as Plato's fear of poetry, and as modern as animadversions on the corrupting power of comics and television. The liberal assumption is that we need not fear the virtual reality created by computers. We are good at distinguishing what is real from what is not: indeed, dealing with 'what ifs' is one of our gifts. But, some argue, maybe computers are different. Is it not possible for them to engross people in a way print, television and the telephone do not? Even if we believe that it is good for us to be deeply engrossed, it is also, the argument goes, liable to change us. Spend hours every day pretending to be someone else, for example, and your sense of identity will be affected.

LRB 17 October 1996 | PDF Download