Virtual worlds made possible by virtue of the Internet, digital computing and highly developed programming languages and systems, are forms of applied alternative systems. Many a would be "net-repreneur" comes to the Internet with the unrealistic expectations of making a million in a New York moment, with nothing more really to offer but their time wasted on Spam e-mail lists and half-baked web-sites. Let us not confuse realities here--virtual worlds are nothing but digital patterns encoded on magnetic storage media; real worlds have a physical basis that go far beyond digital computing systems. Those companies that have made the most money and achieved the greatest success upon the Internet have in fact been those companies that upon some level service and provide the technical platforms for the Internet in the first place.

It follows that as the Internet develops in sophistication, capacity, in its dynamic aspects, in terms of its wireless capabilities and distribution in the world, etc., we should expect certain emergent long-term outcomes from such development. The Internet in other words should have what can be called "unintended" consequences in permitting the realization of new forms of real working systems that are based upon the possibilities achieved primarily through virtual systems. This is evident already in many forms and areas of social life. 

In the last couple of years of my own education, for instance, I've used the Internet and the computer as the basis for virtual instruction far more than at any time in my previous educational experience, and in a wider number of ways than say a decade ago or especially two decades ago. The computer has replaced almost completely my old typewriters and I only keep one old IBM electric in the garage that hasn't itself been used in over 15 years. I rely on the computer for all my word processing, spreadsheet, and increasingly, record keeping and organizational activities. I came to computing only 13 years ago, relatively late compared to most people who have been involved in it. I've really only been on the web the last 6 years, and it has only been in the last couple of years that my web-related efforts have been what one can consider "serious" and concerted.

It is a paradox these days, that in terms of both time and space, my own life and my own world has become increasingly, daily, virtual. The consequence has been that less overall time, money or effort is being spent on actual physical projects or frameworks, rather than upon virtual ones, though my framework overall is more effective and is reaching a wider audience upon more levels, than anytime previously. The paradox of this is that my life takes up less space than at any time previously, and the space I occupy with my frameworks is far better organized and more efficient in its utilization than anytime previously. I would say the same overall for my sense of organization of time, though I have yet to see any real payoffs, much less productive profits, from this sense of working organization. 

As more information can be stored digitally, there is a decreasing need for hardcopy storage or organization solutions. This has enabled me over the years to parse my spatial requirements in this way to a considerable degree. This connects to organization of other spaces, work space, space for book collection, etc., as well.

We may speak thus of "virtual values" and of new "virtue" systems that are increasingly as virtual as they are real. In other words, leading an increasingly virtual lifestyle entails a shift in values reflected in the organization of time and space. Communication and organization of ideas that now proceeds digitally and virtually, and that reaches around the world on a daily basis, has replaced a preoccupation with physical media and means that have very limited and narrow forums of reach. This allows a concentration on physical forms and media that are of higher quality than otherwise, especially when concerns over "mass production" are minimized or completely removed. This is true for instance in problems of printing large volumes of hard-copy material, when digital publication suffices.

I think what I have been personally and professionally evolving in terms of my meta-systems framework is what might be considered an alternative "virtual value" system with consonant behavioral patterns, habits, etc. Its material manifestations are reflected in the fact the number of personal computers I use, along with peripheral systems of printers, canners, etc., have increased from my initial one or two to over eight main CPU's and a number of peripheral components, and the number of network connections between these components have also increased significantly. My largest budget items have been in these digital technology terms as well, and this has crossed over in terms of home-entertainment systems, wireless telephony, etc., as well.

At the same time, there is what I consider to be an increased "counter" reaction or need for more active physical involvement in daily frameworks, and for immersion in nature, etc. The more time I spend in front of a monitor, the greater the need to escape and engage in hands-on projects. I've read more in the last year than I think I have in the previous ten years, and it is a wider range of literature and reading than what would have engaged me any time previously. My range of interests and potential involvements, in zones of "proximal Vygotskyan development" have increased as well. And what I would call a dynamic heterogeneous personality in terms of Piagetian adaptive/assimilative equilibriation of everyday behavioral response is becoming transformed as well, and by extension this reaches out into larger constructed realities.

Life-style aspects of this virtualization of reality must be seen as being largely experimental. In my own life-style I see it as kind of an emergent Buddhist economics and aesthetics--a kind of small is beautiful and a preoccupation with an un-preprogrammed form of anti-structure that I attempt perhaps to translate into a kind of natural environmental context like feeding wild birds from a feeder, cultivating semi-wild flower gardens, etc.

In terms of an extensive framework, it strikes me that transportation systems are a key to the implementation of larger web-based systems. At home, a mailing system has been a critical part of this. Instead of bulk, large scale transportation to nodal points, I see developing faster, smaller, and more frequent transportation to an increasing number of different nodal points. Total volume may be greater, but it is not the mass volume of yesteryear--rather it is the modular individual package volume of Federal Express and UPS trucks weekly, daily or even hourly at one's door, or alternatively of weekly or monthly trips to huge "Depot" outlets often in order to obtain a strange miscellany of individual components. Yesterday it was an ironing board, a food processor, a pencil sharpener, a set of permanent markers, and a few other odds-n-ends that were needed in our domestic framework. Who knows what next month may need.