Reviewed by Christina Teuthorn . Virtual chemicals are poured from virtual beakers and virtual light bounces off virtual walls in simulated science experiments.
Virtual money changes hands in financial transactions.
In film and photography, realistic-looking images depict scenes that never took place between people who never met. In cyberspace, a rapidly expanding system of networks links millions of people in new spaces that are changing the way they think, the nature of sexuality, the form of communities - their very identities. In her groundbreaking study of the psychology of online life, the psychoanalyst Sherry Turkle explores not only what computers do for us, but what they do to us. Life on the Screen shows how the intensive relationships people have with computers change the way they think and feel. In three sections, Turkle describes computers as tools, mirrors, and as gateways to a world through the looking glass of the screen.