When do people go beyond the border between reality and the virtual world?

"The digital world has already become the real world for a long time." (Marc Elsberg, Zero)

Life in a Virtual World and in Reality

by Mikołaj Ziębicki, VIII LO Kraków/Poland

The book “Zero” is an accurate and terrifying image of the generation “Z”- the first generation which does not remember a world without internet. Thanks to the access to the net  we do not know the word “impossible”. Daily we receive more information than our grandparents in a month. We want to have more and more information and we need to be switched on all the time. Taking new information is very easy. After asking Google about the word “love” we are receiving about 13 billion answers in 0.56 seconds. Furthermore, this knowledge is totally for free. 

So, how is it possible that this “free” search engine earns 70 000 dollars per second?

Marc Elsberg answers this question. He says that, even if we are not paying for access to the internet we leave data in the net which are worth about 500 dollars. That’s how he shows us that we sell our privacy for an easy access to knowledge.

Why do we do this?

According to Elsberg, this is because of a “generation exchange”. Our parents could not live without electricity, we cannot live without the net. In the early 90’s, the internet was a kind of gadget. Now it is a part of life. The virtual world is tightly connected with reality. The generation “Z” from the book “Zero” is living somewhere between the net and the real world, over time they do not see the difference between them. They have a feeling that everything is fake. This belief make them think that they are untouchable or even nonlethal. Unfortunately, they need to face the brutal world of the book. The story of the character brings a question- what is fake and what is real?

I really like how you presented the content of the book to us.

I think the topic is really interesting for us, since most teens can't tell the difference between what is real and what is not.

I'm very keen on reading the book, it sounds very gripping.

I only have one negative thing to point out about the article, there are a few minor grammatical  mistakes, but they are easy to correct.

Anna Wischnewski - 30.04.2019 @ 16:14

I think that your article really makes one interested in reading the book "Zero". I also like how you refer to the real world as you speak about the book. 

Felix Wollter - 09.05.2019 @ 11:21

I really liked how you introduced the book. You presented the content in a very interesting way. This is why I'm keen on reading the book.

Personally, I think sharing too many data and spending too much time on the internet can become very dangerous.

I also want to recommend the book "Qualityland", written by the German writer Marc Uwe Kling. The book is about a society in the future, in which machines, robots and computers take over most of the work which humans did in the past. This leads to many persons drifting into the virtual world of the internet and losing humanity, but also to machines becoming more and more like humans. The plot deals especially with Peter who is scrapping the old machines. He is the only one who is aware of the wrong development of humans and machines.

The story is kind of a satire of the future, which makes the reader think about this topic for a long time.

Charlotte Wittlich - 04.06.2019 @ 16:31

A really good presentation of the book, good job. I like the connection you create between the virtual and the real world. I personally think that the virtual and real world are fusing together more and more every day, this can be used to make our life better, but there're a lot of dangers too. The risk of addiction to the internet is maybe bigger than to drugs, so it's necessary to learn how to control the consumption of the net.

I can also recommend a book which deals with this topic, it's called "Ready Player One"; there's a film too that some may know. It's about a boy living in the near future, where most time of the life is spent in a virtual game world called Oasis. It covers topics like addiction, the difference between the  real and the virtual world and how small the difference can be. It's a really good book, which I can recommend to everybody, but especially to people who like science fiction literature and also to people who play videogames, because it's as well a hommage to the game world.

Amaury Mammet - 05.06.2019 @ 19:48  

Hi Mikołaj!

I think your article is really interesting and raises a very important question about our world connected to the internet. You are right saying that life in the next generations will be impossible without it, because already now many young people can’t live without it and spend a lot of their time sending messages to friends or playing video games, and have no ideas of a different way of spending time. Our addiction to the internet is disturbing, because when people at our age want to check something, their first step is entering the question in Google web browser, not asking parents or searching in a dictionary.

In the near future people will not be able to distinguish between the real and virtual world.

Lately, I have read a book entitled “Nerve”  showing us what happens when the internet starts to control your life. This book is about a game called Nerve. In the game you are a Watcher or a Player. When you choose the option “Player”, you have challenges given by Watchers, then you try to complete the challenge, stream your test online and if you end the mission, you will raise money.  It sounds great, but when the main character wants to stop playing Nerve, the situation changes and it starts to become dangerous.

Gabriela Maćkowiak - 16.06.2019 @ 16:17

Thank you for your article, Mikołaj! You raised a very important topic that concerns us all. I will describe my point of view to the problem.

At first I would like to say that we are no longer clients for the companies like Google. Advertisers see us as a product. As you wrote these companies have information about us but we gave it to them  the day we signed up. Since the last year we have a better understanding of what is going on with our data thanks to the case with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

Now I will try to refer to your second question.  The virtual and real world are already inseparable, which gives us the new form of reality.  The development of VR(Virtual Reality) and AR(Augmented Reality) technology is a perfect example of it. We could see how AR affects us two years ago when people were going out in the field with their smartphones looking for pokemons. For some people the virtual world is more interesting because they have the possibility to be there whoever they want. Here I can recommend „Ready Player One”, which tells the story of people whose lives have become a game.

In conclusion, a mixing of these two worlds is inevitable so we have to set our development in the right direction.  We should also remember to always use social media by knowing the threats.

Szymon Pstrusiński - 18.06.2019 @ 00:41

The article was very interesting and well written. You mentioned many important things. The topic you wrote about is really present because social media and the internet are more and more taking over our world. You make a great point about not mixing reality with virtuality and that we rely on technology. It's shocking that we are selling our privacy and don't know it. With each generation, new values rise and it will always be like that and change to something new. You can see some similarities to the book "Blackout" by Marc Elsberg but the differences are that he writes about electricity and the book "Zero" is about technology and sharing data in general.

Vera Petersson - 03.10.2019 @ 13:48