"Are we not more and more monads with no direct windows onto reality, interacting alone with the PC screen, encountering synchronously communicating with the entire globe?"

It is so ironic that the best way to be connected to the universe is to be alone on your computer. We are becoming so anti social as we become more and more cyber-social. Often we forget how wonderful it is to have a face to face conversation over coffee. Normal relationships are being replaced with binary ones. It was said that in 10 years, we would actually miss the delicate chord of the concert A and F dial tone, imagine how much we will miss a human voice. The "No Sex Please" article says that we cannot often distinguish between a human typing and a machine response. That leaves us with the idea that a computer could assimilate all the duties of our online friends and we would never notice. The next generation may have an easier time typing than speaking, which is an entirely new evolution. We can create as many cyber-personalities as we see fit, while leaving our actual self completely abandoned. People need communication and interaction in order to exist. What if there is no one left to be 'old fashioned' what will happen to our ice cream socials and our games of monopoly? Will all interactions be online? I fear that cyborg status may not be optional...