‘Devirtualize’ vs. ‘devirtualize’

A few days ago, I learned a new word. “Today I have devirtualized to a student,” a friend who is a teacher, usually online, told me. He dervirtualized It sounded strange to me, I didn’t know if she had actually said distortedof detract: “Altering the true nature of something.” “To remove virtue, substance or vigor from something.” I didn’t understand anything.

My friend clarified it for me: “Devirtualize It is when you meet someone in person after having had contact through a screen.” In it DLEhe Dictionary from the academies, that neoterm does not come, but FundéuRAE does talk about it: “The verb devirtualizewith the meaning of ‘meeting in person someone with whom a virtual relationship has previously been established’, is well constructed according to the rules of word formation in Spanish, so its use is considered appropriate.”

The rise of social networks, video meetingsof the webinar (a term that is not included in the DLEand which I find online defined as “an online educational presentation that is delivered live, during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments”) and other similar tools and formats has meant that, in effect, many Let’s now meet more new people through a screen than in person. We will end up devirtualizing some of them, others not.

The transition from a person’s online knowledge to face-to-face knowledge sometimes brings with it notable imbalances in perception, and even great disappointments. Like in the past, when you gave a voice on the radio a face and eyes and it was nothing like the idea that you had of him or her, today some devirtualization has ended in distortion, when neither nature nor virtue nor The substance or vigor that someone was supposed to have turned out to be true.

The media changes, the technology changes, but the human essence changes little. It’s always the same. Not so with language, always in perpetual change, always evolving. And here we are watching it.

#Devirtualize #devirtualize