On Internet Relationships
Many of the philosophers who have written on the internet have argued that internet relationships are in various ways diminished compared to everyday, embodied kinds. For example, Hubert Dreyfus in his On The Internet argues that:
our sense of the reality of things and people and our ability to interact effectively with them depend on the way our body works silently in the background. Its ability to get a grip on things provides our sense of the reality of what we are doing and what we are ready to do…All this our body does so effortlessly, pervasively, and successfully that it is hardly noticed. That is why it is so easy to think that in cyberspace we could get along without it, and why it would, in fact, be impossible to do so.
It is easy to understand how philosophers come to make these kinds of arguments. Many important facets of our personal relationships seem to require face-to-face contact. Dreyfus, for example, argues that trust in another person is in part based on the experience that they do not take advantage of our vulnerability when given the opportunity to so in a face-to-face situation. Certainly it does seem to be true that we can have a level of confidence in people we meet in person that is not available in online relationships. Particularly, the opportunity for gross deception is minimised in a face-face-situation. The philosopher Gordon Graham, and countless other people, have pointed out that it is very easy to deceive people on the internet by inventing wholly imaginary personas – something which it is much more difficult to achieve in the non-virtual world.