virtual flaneur?

Many people seem to be very attracted to the idea of living, at least for brief interludes, in virtual environments, as evidenced by commentary and excitement around the upcoming 3D movie "Avatar" by James Cameron. Perhaps it is a harmless, fascinating experience, like having a particularly vivid dream which you wake from, but have persistent memories of. My fear is that this will be the next expectation for modeling of what will become real places that we live in and walk through in our physical bodies, or even that people will lose interest in walking through real places in their physical bodies. Perhaps that is just my particular Luddite phobia, that the people-filled environments I walk in daily will become depopulated. It's probably a ridiculous fear; virtual environments like Sim City and Second Life have been around for a while now and people don't spend all their time there - do they?

The avatars are becoming more appealing, too. These bionic penguins are very cute and seemingly lifelike. I can imagine people wanting to use these as avatars, although that is not what they were developed for.