Mark Slouka's essay "The Road to Unreality" is used as an introduction to his book, War of the Worlds, in which he claims virtual reality gives a deceptive impression of reality. Slouka directs his concerns towards an older, maturer audience, those who will be able to remember a time when things were not as advanced as they are now. He wants to salvage our culture and warn those who have been caught up in a "growing separation from reality" (94).

Slouka wants his audience to think about how technology has changed society and how direct human contact and true-to-life experiences are threatened, because technology is making it harder to distinguish real life, or RL, from virtual reality, or VR. Slouka not only condemns the VR of computers, but also of other forms of media such as movies, videogames, television, and radio. He cites the example of Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, which panicked the country's citizens into
fleeing, believing that they were under alien attack.

Slouka believes that our nonchalant attitudes towards computers and other VR outlets are cause for concern. He questions the lack of ethics that computers promote. Video games have themes marketing violence without consequences. Players are encouraged to kill as many victims as possible and then reincarnate the dead by restarting the game in order to kill again.

The essay does not overlook the benefits of technology. Slouka gives credit to technology for sparing the lives of his wife and child when complications arose during the child's birth, but he has a problem when situations become overwhelming and consuming. He claims that, in a worst-case scenario, even though RL and VR will be distinguishable from each other, "we will [...] opt for the digitalized world over the real one" (97).

This essay looks at how there are people who are willing to "re-present" (95) the real world and others who disagree with that depiction. There are numerous examples in everyday life of simulation being substituted for reality. Especially in Hollywood, things are deceiving. In the movie Free Willy, how many people are able to recognize when the RL killer whale is being viewed as opposed to the animatronic whale? Computers and technology are entertaining and helpful to a degree, but we have to look out for those advancements that pressure us into the conformities of unreality.

Slouka, Mark.  "The Road to Unreality."  CyberReader. 2nd ed.  Ed. Victor J. Vitanza.  Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon,  1999. 95-103.