That the virtual world "on the other side of the screen" is now considered the more significant one is apparent.   Just as people in more religious times downplayed the significance of the world of direct, tangible experience as "temporal" (the real world being spiritual), so we today undervalue the world of our own direct experience in comparison to the "larger" world we see depicted in the media.

The role of the media themselves in facilitating this shift cannot be overstated.

Entertainers, athletes, and politicians become iconic figures through a process of imprinting on the public imagination that is carried out via the media.  Similarly, when companies become virtualized by CEOs playing to the galleries on Wall Street, a very significant portion of the process occurs through the workings of the business press.

The media are also ultimately at the root of our most typical total-surround virtual reality environments, including not just Disneyland but also most of the city of Orlando.  When we go to the Universal Studios Tours or Walt Disney World, we are not choosing just any virtual reality environment.  Something like Ed’s Bunny World would never draw us all the way to Central Florida.  We journey to Orlando out of a desire to enter into a realm of virtual reality that has been rendered significant to us via movies and television and other media.

It therefore seems evident that if we want to move away from being a virtual reality-based society, it would be sensible to start with the media, and the roles we expect them to play.