Perhaps David Vetter, who died on this day in 1984, best represents the difficulty in that question. Vetter, born without a functioning immunity system, was susceptible to every germ that passed his way. Doctors expected this to be the case even before David was born, so at birth (1971) he was placed inside a sterile bubble that was to be his home until he outgrew it and was moved to a larger, and larger bubble as he grew. Leaving his bubble could be fatal, so Vetter grew to know only those parts of the world brought to him. He was apparently very aware of the artificiality of this situation, and a fascinating account of his life reports on the impossibility of learning to function in a social world when ultimately he was unable to socialize and could only "touch" the world through a pair of plastic gloves. Homepages in cyberspace are undoubtedly a means of personal expression, but ultimately what we really want is the interaction that perceive cyberspace as work-space offers.
Go to: Homeless in Cyberspace