“As I sit at my desk writing, I am engaged with an audience that exists in other places and times… My audience is at once imaginary and real: at the moment of writing, it is imaginary; at the moment of reading, it is real. You are a figment of my imagination (in my time-space), but you are not only a figment of my imagination, having materialized somewhat like I imagined you (in your time-space). This odd link that the act of writing establishes between fantasy and reality is increasingly at the heart of human action; the self is challenged to become more effective through time and space, more capable of acting and sensing at a distance – or, following the terminology of Donald Janelle (1973), more extensible.”
– Paul C. Adams, The Boundless Self: Communication in Physical and Virtual Spaces, p1
