Opposite of Virtual?

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PeterWillis

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I've a suspicion this thread might be swiftly invited to take its drinks through to the Lounge by Maitre'd Kim, but I'll start it here since it invloves this Forum. A substantial proportion of its more active posters met up last weekend, around a pub table in Woodbridge (sometimes the CB Forum reminds me of the Liberal Party - the old single-taxi Liberal Party - among the ybw forums).
One issue which arose was the question of what, nowadays, ie the opposite of Virtual?
Not, presumably, Real or Actual, because - I'd suggest - this Forum, this activity, is a fully real and actual part of its participants' lives.
No saisfactory answer emerged in the Cherry Tree, perhaps because the conversation there was more fluid, garbled and inconsequential than the orderly, after-you-claude, coherently and gramatically, even elegantly syntaxed, sentences of this Virtual meeting-place.
Or possibly because no-one could come up with anything on the spur of the moment. I know I couldn't.
Any suggestions?
 
Neither was my headache the next morning.

A physical meet is the closest I can think of, but has undertones of fornication which, with so many seethingly passionate Catholics about at the moment, might be inappropriate or even dangerous.

/<
 
I had thought it might be a physical manifestation of virtual correspondents - but the landlord might think the word infestation more appropriate, especially as a couple of us went back again for Sunday lunch. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I have no trouble with actual; but then I wasn't consuming the embalming fluid that you guys were. It obviously has a deleterious effect on the Central Nervous System in general and the Cerebral Something-or-other in particular.
I remember taking part in discussions like these when I was just a student; the more esoteric the better, and anything was up for discussion except Geology or Engineering. We'd already had a basinful of those before we got to the pub.
The correspondents to this forum are very real people. Some of us are separated from the others by a continent and ocean or three, but we're still real enough. The problems are all too real. The only difference is the lack of face-to-face contact. I'd love to join you at the Cherry Tree, as would a lot of other Out-of-Town-ers, for a pint of embalming fluid. Meanwhile you'll just have to have one for me.
Cheers!
Peter.
 
Antonym of virtual is actual, Why the debate?
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Not asking for the antonym.
My proposition is that.... wait for it...
Virtual is the new Actual.
Discuss.
I've been looking up the thesaurus, and have discovered Coporeal, which suffers many of the same overtones as physical, though in a more ecclesiastical and less carnal sort of way.
And Hypostatic, the definition of which actually leaves me more confused.
Neither seems to capture the full incosequentiality of being in the same place and time as compared with being mediated through this...er... medium, which, being purposely evolved, and with sophisticated protocols of its own is in many way superior to tne mereley-real thing.
'Actual' sounds self-aggrandising for such a context.
Which is not to say I didn't enjoy the Adnams,
Or the food - especially the vegetables. Not often you can call cabbage divine, but it was, as were the neeps (though as one of our number, who had just scraped over the sill into the tiemill remarked, 'Don't mention neaps to me'.)
Or the company, or the unexpected marmalade.
Mere reality does have its upside.
 
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