X-Reality

Term created by Beth Coleman, author of Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation

The idea that humans, as networked subjects who engage in mediated communication, live our daily lives somewhere between what had been the virtual and what is reality. According to Coleman, “We understand our world to be a porous one where the events of online exchange influence the events of the physical world.” Like past technologies (ie: the telephone) we have incorporated the internet and digital communication as part of our everyday lives, no longer consciously thinking about the fact that they are ‘online’ interactions.

This differs from previous theories about interaction online, where the internet was considered a space outside of the everyday world, somewhere that people could go to play, and escape reality. This idea was initially held in the 1990s by Sherry Turkle and Julian Dibbell, and later on by Willian Gibson, Wired magazine, and the early hackers and coders who believed in the concept of a ‘free’ internet.