It's my nature to take things to the extreme, and I've grown accustomed to living on the edge. I've been to the outer limits so often it seems like my normal state. I look around and see unknown territory and I think: here I am again, out on a limb.

Traveling into cyberspace has taken me to that distant realm. I've journeyed into the abyss, looking back at the great distance to the desk chair in front of the Macintosh. The science-fiction films that show a person swallowed into the screen, out of real space and into cyberspace have the right idea, but the wrong image. The physical body doesn't go through the modem. But part of your being does float out the phone line into another universe, and it's not science fiction. Cyber life is real. It's a place in your mind where you're joined to the minds of others.

Although cyberspace is called virtual reality, this book will show that it's not so different from real life. Virtual spaces provide real communities, and through this new perspective, we can examine human behavior from another angle. After living for seven years in the online world, I've pledged allegiance to citizenship of this new culture.

Our real-world self always interacts with our cyber-self, so transformations are individualistic and actual. The cyber world is just another arena in which to express ourselves. If I'm in an online gaming situation, such as a MUD [Multi-User Domain], try as I might to act like a cockroach, my personal quirks will show through. If I have a hang-up about physical distance and I'm approached by another cyber roach whose antennae are too close to mine, I will react as me not as a roach: Hey buddy, get your antenna outta my face.

Long before the advent of the cyber world, renowned psychologist and personality theorist Carson (1969:25-26), discussing the interpersonal nature of personality, explained how we are formed in our relationship to others.

According to Sullivan, "personality is the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations which characterize a human life" (1953:110-11).... It should be noted that an "interpersonal situation," as Sullivan uses the term, requires the participation of only one "real" person, in that any other "persons" in any particular instance may be wholly illusory -- that is, products of the real person's imaginations or fantasies. ... Strictly speaking, then, personality is nothing more (or less) than the patterned regularities that may be observed in an individual's relations with other persons, who may be real in the sense of actually being present, real but absent and hence "personified," or illusory.

Sexuality is also a personal thing. Many of our wants, desires, and kinks stem from early experiences. When it comes to cyber sex, a whole other arena opens up. We can act out the sexual fantasies we'd never consider doing in RL, the fantasies we wouldn't want to do in RL. We can switch gender and switch gender preferences. Everything is possible, and this book will show that the Internet generation is, in fact, trying out these sexual possibilities, ranging from hard-core net addicts who never engage in cyber sex to hard-core cyber-sex addicts who've had to cancel their net accounts because cyber sex was overriding everything else in their lives.

I will trace my development as an online sexual persona, starting on CompuServe in 1990; finding Echo, a New York City bbs (Bulletin Board System) in 1991; expanding to the Internet, the Web, the MOOs in 1994; the Palace in 1995; and on to CUseeme in 1996. I will also recount the experiences of other cyber citizens in their travels into this new world. Hopefully my journey, and those of others, will inspire your own cyber wanderings.