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Alex on why you should stop apologizing for your online life
- 9 January, 2012
- 3 comments
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking what we do online isn't real, and doesn't matter. And it doesn't help that we've developed the acronym IRL, In Real Life, to refer to the offline world.
But why shouldn't we regard our online lives as just as real, just as valid and just as meaningful as our offline ones? That's the question Alex posed a few months ago at TEDx Victoria, proceeding from a blog post she wrote last year for the Harvard Business Review.
The talk, titled "Ten Reasons to Stop Apologizing for your Online Life", just went live. And if you've ever wondered why a valued online friendship doesn't count as "the real world" while a trip to the mall does - and, more to the point, what you can do about it - you'll want to watch.
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Comments
Jon Leland says
Excellent! Thanks for sharing this. Creating meaning is what it's all about. And that IS real. Bravo!
Nick Chertock says
Great message from Alexandra. I totally agree. No reason to apologize for online interactions. They are real. We interact with those we CHOOSE to talk to vs. a lot of 'real life' situations when we're forced to socialize with people based strictly on proximity.
Ernest says
I really enjoyed your presentation. I totaly agree with your description about the nature of REALITY. From a constructivism perspective we are always constructing our perception of THE WORLD,US and the OTHERS.
And without knowing it we will call our construction REALITY. REALITY as the rest of our conceptual world of representations is an abstraction, a dream...
And what I really liked about your presentation was your way of shaking our illusions about the reel and the non reel our primitive way of splitings the complexity..of our experiences.
Ernest