Every day we wake up and live our day with one foot firmly in the “real”, physical world and the other in the online, virtual world. These two worlds of information, experience, and entertainment play a major role in the lives of people all across the globe. I remember a time before Google when people thought of the Internet as a place only for geeks and freaks, but for a number of years it’s been mainstream for the masses. And yet, people tend to think of these two separate domains as distinct, separate, and often … strange. While the Internet is clearly a tool with which we supplement our lives, and the real world is the place where we actually live our life, the virtual world mirrors the real world in many significant ways and many people actively (and even to excesss) live their lives out online. This is my attempt to reframe a small group of actions in both spaces, as being… entirely what you’d expect – not strange or illogical – simply a byproduct of human actions, with shared characteristics. Most of these may make you go “duh”, but this is my way of having a little fun, while clearing up any misconceptions about these two topics.

Exploration
The real-world is … brimming full of people and places that you will never have a chance to meet or see, but this shouldn’t bother you because a lot of these people you would never want to visit or meet anyways due to opposite interests. Similarly, the Internet is a free for all of good site meets bad site, good person meets bad person, and personally relevant meets irrelevant – it’s the world wide web – you’re not expected to see everything, meet everyone, and do everything … it’s simply too big and you’d never have the time, money or attention for everything that’s out there. On the Internet you discover something new every day. Whatever it is that you discover tends to come your way via. targeted search, advertisements or serendipitous exploration. This is true of the real-world also, and so too is the reality that the most powerful drivers of online referrals are personal in nature, from people who you know and trust. In the end, what you end up finding is normally not even what you set out to search for in the first place.

More discussion below.

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