[Jasper_]

The last paragraph is ominously correct:

> What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

This could have been written last week about the metaverse, or the experiences we faced with the pandemic. That article is quite on point in retrospect. What Clifford forgot is that replacing salespeople and customer support with nothing is valuable because it cuts costs. A CD-ROM (or or iPad app, to update the analogy) sucks as a replacement for a real teacher, but it is a hell of a lot cheaper...