<p>Over the last couple of months a few strange things have happened. My unassuming primary teacher Tweets her radical views. My grandma joins Facebook (sends me a "Friend Request") and uses Messenger to reach out to me. My granddad posts some very interesting statuses and sometimes fascinating short stories online. My dad sends me a LinkedIn Invite to join his "Professional Network". And my mum… what can I say? My mum is redefining the social order by being a generation younger. She's always up to speed with the latest innovations and has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the likes on her finger tips (yes, quite literally). Way cooler than me. These developments largely got me thinking.<br><br>Technology has reshaped and redefined the way we live, we think or we look at things. Who would have imagined that an aged biblical reference of a civilisational and theological distinction in human era, defined by the birth of Jesus (the messiah of God), the AD and BC, would be over powered with the birth of a modern messiah (read Messenger), that's created a global system (G-Sys), that divides time into two distinct periods. Online and offline.<br><br>And like these extraordinary times, our lives have also been split into two and we are often faced with this stark duality. Real Vs. virtual.<br><br>We have all been caught in between this duality in some form, by choice or by construct, and are still coping, as a species, to fully comprehend its repercussions. We have all been in a situation where our closest friends or family members obsess over online social networking semantics and we instantly realise its ludicrousness.<br><br>How often have you spent time craftily word-smithing a Facebook status, where the choicest words, use of punctuations or lack off and tonality determine the number of "Likes" or "Comments" you'd get? How many times have you typed and re-typed the same comment before actually hitting 'Post'? How many times have you logged back on to a social media platform to see the number of "Likes"? How many times have we all done the same?<br><br>The answer, either way, is irrelevant. The question is what does this mean?<br><br>In an age where the populace spends significant amount of time getting their virtual and online etiquette right, where people spend hours ensuring their Instagram pictures look artsy, where Tweets need to be offbeat, disruptive and provocative to create a stir; where the entire premise of the number of "Likes" determines a strong correlation with one's popularity, likeability and how many "Friends" they have; where friends are made through a digital footprint; where realism is disappearing into the virtual world, we need to be cautious.<br> <br>Don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting for a second to curb the use of technology or police it; not at all. But why can't we add an element of realism into our virtual lives.<br><br>In a need to satisfy the virtual quest, are we missing out on the real? Have we started spending more time on our holidays through the lenses of our smart phones and tablets and less through our real eyes (the ones we were born with)? Have we spent way too much time applying filters to make the good look better and in that process lost out on seeing the real? And are we doing all this for our social currency? Well, there's a reason why the virtual world is called a "Second Life". Let's live the first one first.<br><br>We don't always need an Occulus to show us the real- virtual blur. We have examples all around us. How often do we hear parents, teachers complain and read about children spending more time playing sporting games on a digital interface rather than in real? Playing games digitally is essential and I'm a strong propounder of gamification. In fact, my most recent venture is a start-up that explores the applications of technology and gamification in education (use of game design and game mechanics in non-game contexts). But no one denies the benefits of playing a sport in its most real sense, physically.<br><br>The irony stares at me pretty vividly. The physical- digital divide (and the real-virtual divide) has experienced a unique evolution in our lives. The same technology that has let people bridge across geographies, connect with friends and family oceans away, reduced the physical gap and make communication seamless, in many cases, is now the cause of having a contrarian effect on people. As families sit on dinner tables and hardly have any conversations, or watch television together and are engrossed in their smart phones, technology is driving people around us, far away. The virtual social networks is effectively replacing the real network. That is the strangest irony.<br><br>The technology that helped bring people closer is now creating the divide between people near by. As fire drives out fire, so does technology. Online platforms and applications today are trying to fix this issue; they're trying to implement the use of technology to make people reconnect in the real world, physically, again. The technology that lead online market places give way for the offline, is now making the online re-connect back to the offline network.<br><br>I don't question the benefits of these powerful apps. social networks, and the virtual world, and am myself an avid consumer of these. But we shouldn't go amiss in also recognising that we're on a moving ground. As long as a balance is maintained, we're on a great path. If not, we have a real virtual problem. Or rather, a virtually real problem?<br><br><em>The author, Arjun Madhavan is strategist and leads new business development at Assemblage Entertainment Pvt Ltd</em></p>
