who are you? who, who? who, who?

From our earliest days we have this urge to put on alternative personas or engage in imaginary realities. I would savor pretending to be an astronaut. I would look forward to my buddies coming over in the afternoon to play a simulated war game with all our plastic m-16's and silver-painted 6-shooters. The interesting thing about our generation is that technology has allowed us to indulge that preference for donning identities not our own and living vicariously in worlds we'll never travel to. Does the explosion of media for catering to that need have any long-term effects? Here's an article written in last month's The New Atlantis about what our penchant for slipping into something a little more. . .whatever you want it to be, might be doing to us. What do you think?