Our virtual world

vir•tu•al (adj.):
1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name (American Heritage Dictionary); being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted: “a virtual dictator” (Merriam Webster); having most properties, the appearance, essence, or effect, of something without being that thing (Business dictionary).
2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination (American Heritage Dictionary); in philosophy defined as "that which is not real" but may display the salient qualities of the real (Wikipedia).
3. In Computer Science: Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network: virtual conversations in a chatroom. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Start looking for the word virtual, and it really is everywhere. And yet, it means only that something looks like the real thing without in fact being it. Even virtual conversations are not real conversations since they are carried out via computer networks whereas the word conversation in fact means “the spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions, and feelings” (American Heritage Dictionary) and derives from the Latin conversare, to live with, keep company.
In essence or effect though not in actual fact, “To clear the Broadway theater district at curtain time on Saturday night is …a virtual military operation” (Frank Rich in the NYT on 5/9/2010). What city officials had to do after the Times Square bomb threat so that “the crossroads of the world looked like a ghost town” might indeed have appeared to be a military operation without in fact being one.
A mix between a "product of the imagination" and "something created or carried on by means of a computer" is the "virtual ownership" of an art object that recently sold for around $ 6,000. The buyer's "ownership would be tentative: the technical innards of ‘A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter’ carr[y] a program that would relist the thing on eBay every week, forever. Indeed, the terms and conditions for submitting a bid clearly stipulated that the device must be connected to the Internet, constantly trying to resell itself at a higher price to someone else. ..Part of what [the buyer] Terence Spies found compelling about ‘A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter’ was how it encapsulated not simply the way people feel about the value of art specifically but also about value in general. ‘Things have become much more virtual and much more detached,’ he says.” “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” is created and carried on by means of a computer. At the same time, it also seems to be – or at least represents - a product of the imagination. The piece “kind of says something about the way people buy and sell things now,” [Spies] continues. “We live in a world where you can build a successful billion-dollar Silicon Valley company selling imaginary cows to people” (“Just Priceless”).
The same symbiosis of meanings is exemplified by one GPS-addict’s observation that “I slowly began to spend more time concentrating on the virtual streetscape than the real one.” The GPS's virtual streetscape is created by means of computers, yet it also sometimes is a mere illusion. After all, the author remembers that one time he found “a stream of cars headed straight at me on a one-lane street. … I could hear TomTom’s voice calmly demanding that I continue to drive the wrong way up the one-way street” (“Turn off GPS”).
But what is the DJIA’s “virtual freefall for about 15 minutes on Thursday” (WSJ 5/9)? Had it the “properties, appearance, essence, or effect, of [a freefall] without being that thing?” Was it “a product of the imagination?” Was it “created or simulated by means of a computer network?” Even though The Washington Post seems to believe the latter since "Computer programs designed to make lightning-fast decisions, based on complex mathematical rules, or algorithms, about what to buy and sell made massive trades without human input" (5/8/10), "Heads of the biggest U.S. trading venues could provide no clear reason for last week’s stock- market selloff in meetings today with the Securities and Exchange Commission" (Businessweek 5/10/10). Whatever its causes, the freefall was real, not virtual, as many investors certainly can attest.
Indeed, the word virtual is very often misused. Sentences like “A prototype version of ‘smart’ sunglasses that can allow wearers to instantly change the color of their lenses to virtually any hue of the rainbow” (Live Science 3/27/07), or “Earn cash back virtually everywhere you go” (American Express) use virtually simply to make a promise when in fact there is none. If anybody sued American Express because he did not earn 3% of his gas purchase at a filling stating in Timbuktu, American Express would most likely claim that it never said he in fact would earn cash everywhere. Similarly, “It’s virtually certain that the money could have been better spent” (The Daily Aztec 5/10), means nothing. Maybe it’s almost certain, but it’s certainly not really certain.
Similarly uncertain may be how effective virtual education is in which students communicate with the teacher via computer networks. Does it have “most properties, the appearance, and essence [of education] without being that thing”? Anyway, like many other schools, Memorial University attempts to “appeal to an ever-growing technologically savvy student population” and its “Centre for Career Development (CCD) went virtually everywhere this past year, introducing several online tools to help students and alumni find jobs.” The Centre certainly didn’t go anywhere. It simply went virtual in many of its pursuits, “From tweaking resumes and cover letters, to brushing up on interview skills and learning how to go about a job search, the CCD has taken its career advice online” (Memorial University website).

Visit some more examples of not so real things.