People are losing touch with reality. This is the claim that Mark Slouka makes in his essay "The Road to Unreality." The author tells us that people are beginning to live vicariously through technology. Chatrooms on the Internet have taken the place of socializing in the real world. Television tells us what to believe and what not to believe. The author supports his claim very well in this essay. He gives many good examples, such as those about people who believe everything on the television and the panic that ensued after Orson Welles' reading of War of the Worlds. I agree with his concepts also. I believe that people are slowly moving farther away from living in the physical world.
Slouka gives us an example of a woman who trusts the television set more than her own experience. When a pregnant woman is murdered and her husband blames an unknown black man as the assailant, a neighbor is asked if she believes the husband is telling the truth. She replies, "I don't know. I'm dying for the movie to come out so I can see how it ends" (95). The movie, she thinks, will tell her the truth. Later, a movie of this crime, called Good Night, Sweet Wife: A Murder Boston, is released (95). Slouka tells us that this complete trust of truth on television is an example of a trend that marks "our growing separation from society" (95). The Internet is another example of this trend.
There are people in this world who no longer leave their houses because of the Internet. We can buy our groceries, books, clothes and almost anything else we need without leaving our homes. We can also socialize with others in cyberspace. I believe Slouka's assessment is a good one. I have a family member who orders her groceries online, and then they are delivered to her front door. The author asks John Perry Barlow to count the advantages of leaving the "physical world behind" (102). Barlow replies, "Damn few" (102). Barlow goes on to say that "loading ourselves into the net" is inevitable (102). The line between real and fake is becoming blurred.
I believe that this article reaches out to people who are not totally immersed in technology. Slouka comes on very strong in the beginning of his essay, but towards the end he lightens his tone some. He talks about technology saving the lives of his wife and son. He seems to contradict himself in this essay. He tells us that technology is causing us to give up our humanity, but he also says that it is good to have technology in the medical field. In the end he leaves us with a warning.
Slouka wants us to be careful with technology and pay close attention to it. He says, "[T]echnological innovation has its own logic, often separate from questions of value and ethics" (102). I think that his use of strong examples can easily sway an audience that has not become technically dependent as of yet. I believe that this is a well written essay. At the same time, I think people who are already consumed with new technology would find much fault with his concepts. I am not totally knowledgeable in this field, and it is not hard to pull me into believing his ideas and theories. As we become more technologically independent, we lose the basic assumption that the truth is hard to find.
Slouka, Mark. "The Road to Unreality." CyberReader. 2nd ed. Ed. Victor J. Vitanza. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1999. 122-123.
Megan Schlicht
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