There is no doubt that the internets have entangled themselves into our lives. NPR has a fascinating interview with Jeremy Bailenson of Standford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab about how a person’s virtual persona (ala Second Life type virtual realities) affects their everyday life from gaining confidence to losing weight.

NPR’s Learning from the virtual you audio clip

I don’t have experience with Second Life version of me other than my Nintendo Wii mii, which looks a lot like Mr. Garrison crossed with Elton John crossed with David Cross - let me tell you, that is great for my self esteem :} I do think the internet has affected me in other ways, some for the better, some for the worse. The most apparent thing that sticks out to me is that I don’t read the same as I did 10 years ago. I tend to skim looking for bullet points and quick understanding rather than ruminating on points and trying to really understand the nut of a passage. Obviously, this is not a good thing. On the positive side, the internet has truly influence my position on intellectual property by observing remarkable people share their hard work for free. That truly amazes me in many, many ways, but I’ll digress from that for now.

My question to all of you is how has the internet changed/enriched/affected you?