...is the title of a lecture-thing at Cafe Culture next month. (info@cafeculturenortheast.org.uk).

Description: 'Pervasive networks, easy access to the internet etc ...are blurring the boundary between being on-line and off-line.......(and have) implications for our sense of identity.How can we know who we are when many of the people we spend our time with are only electronically available?'

As a matter of interest (and for a little personal research) does this sort of thing bother anyone here?

I'd try and get out more

never understood all that vitual crap, like world of warcraft, for god sake get out more and talk to people you sad gits.

If my kids were into that i would smash the computer to bits.

No, no...they mean people like...gulp....us

ie. message board people

Mr Compo, you haven't got any kids, have you?? Or are you undereporting??

Well I hope not. I was talking about in the future.

This is JUST a messageboard ... that's all it is. Or do you think it's more than that to some posters?

Oh bugger...you mean the virtual world isn't real??

Of course it's JUST a message board, my dear, of course it is.
And other venues are JUST cafes and pubs and universities and offices.......what's the difference? You are not one of the posters who never take things on here seriously, you know.

What is there to take seriously on here?

Like other Poolies who can't get to games, I read all the match comments and views ... and value the majority of them. I cannot personally comment on a match or a player because I wasn't there.

So apart from that, what should be taken seriously?

I dont think I understand the question...but I dont have a problem joining up cyberlife and reallife, although sometimes I do feel a bit daft when people say how do you know him/her, and I have to say the internet....mostly I avoid the truth there and say I just do.....

but then younger people have no problem with knowing people from the internet,its normal

I don't think you're supposed to understand the question, Mr S.

Social science nonsense which has nothing to do with real world.

Well, I sort of understand it. Chat rooms etc create parallel worlds in the sense that some people who use them are creating false persona which they intend other people to take for real.

On here, for example, many of the posters know each other and so can make distinctions between identities. But there are many posters now who don't know each other, and you can actually see them getting unnerved by 'in-jokes' etc that they're not in on. They don't know what's real and what's not.

Anyway, if you don't find it interesting, pass on......

in that episode of South Park there was an evil parallel universe, where Cartman was the good guy
This opens up all sorts of possibilities for existentialist conversation as well

But I can't be arsed

i hope that the boundaries are getting confused! i beat everyone i play on fifa10 when im pools so thats gotta be good if computers are becoming real life pools are going to win every game 10-0 and james brown will score 80 goals in a season?