I get the idea that any time the media play with the idea of virtuality, realism gets defensive and takes to asserting and insisting about how terrible it would be that any alternatives to "true" reality would even be considered.
The truth is that virtual realities, worlds, things, or whatever you call them are not alternative realities at all. They are different configurations of the same kinds of things that make up the realities that realists accept as true realities.
I can still remember when the internet came out how the realists had to buzz and buzz about globalization, the global village, etc. all presumably for the sake of making "the world wide web" seem like a threat to nationalism.
Yes, the fact is that information can be sent via internet anywhere with an internet connection in about the same amount of time. The question is why there was even such a big issue made about the geographical locations of nodes on the internet anyway. Actually, I know the answer and it has to do with power, control, regulation, and territorialization.
In reality, virtual worlds are anything that happens on internet, or in the cognitive network of your imagination for that matter. Shopping on Amazon.com is virtual shopping. Communicating on this forum creates virtual discussions.
The problem with the word "virtual" is that it automatically compares something with another, presumably non-virtual version of it. Is an online discussion any less real than an offline one? No, the only thing that changes is participants' relationship to the medium of communication used to facilitate the discussion.
Still, the most interesting issue to me remains how various virtual and non-virtual realities interact with and influence each other. Nicolas Negropante saw the information economy as a revolution in which atoms would be replaced with bits in increasing ways.
I don't know if bits have so much replaced atoms, though, as they have changed the way people see and use them. Virtuality is a reality, but it's neither separate nor in competition with any other reality.