Wow, that’s a hefty title. And, this may be a somewhat ironic topic by virtue of the fact that you’re most likely “plugged in” to the Internet right now reading this. More ironic, still, is that I was “plugged in” when I wrote it. But beyond the technicalities and plays on words, there is a deeper meaning in the form of questions. How do we live authentically, find meaningful work, and have meaningful relationships in an increasingly artificial world? Have we become like the characters in the movies The Matrix, or Avatar? Whereby our daily lives have become boringly dull and we do not find any joy or meaning unless we are somehow “plugged in” to an artificial (and admittedly fantastic) electronic world? We text, we tweet, we IM, we email, we Facebook, we play video games and more often than not, avoid direct face-to-face human interaction. Are we losing our ability to discern between reality and fantasy, between fact and fiction, between real and artificial?
