Can I challenge it to a fight?

Stephen Colbert on the internet, pithy as usual:

I must confess that I’ve never trusted the Web. I’ve always seen it as a coward’s tool. Where does it live? How do you hold it personally responsible? Can you put a distributed network of fiber-optic cable “on notice”? And is it male or female? In other words, can I challenge it to a fight?

Hubert Dreyfus makes a similar point (though with less pith) in his book On the Internet. Dreyfus argues on theoretical grounds that the internet is impersonal. We are not “at risk” online in the same way that we are in person, and therefore the relationships we form there are less real. And the political landscape of the internet is of thin commitments and lack of deep discussion.

Well, perhaps. Or perhaps not. There is plenty of evidence that virtual experience is real in powerful ways. I argue in How Computer Games Help Children Learn that in many ways the educational opportunities of good games can be more authentic than face to face experiences that many children have. And the politics of the internet is anything but characterized by thin commitments.

Sometimes an ounce of good empiricism is worth a pound of theory. Like an ounce of good comedy.