The debates and decisions surrounding virtual reality, cyberspace, and other forms of computer-mediated communication have been, like so much philosophical reasoning within the Western tradition, organized around antinomies. One of the principal concerns involves a conflict between the real world and the computer-generated simulations that appear to threaten it. As Peter Horsfield describes it, the question is rnwhether the essential characteristics of virtual reality as a reality in which the frustrations and disappointments of the actual world do not exist will inevitably lead to a diminishing desire to live in the actual world. So, instead of learning the disciplines of living with or changing one's individual or communal environment, one finds it easier to escape into a reality where these practicalities do not exist.
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