Communication vs. Interaction

Something I've wondered about for a while now, as I see myself becoming more and more sedentary with each passing day...do the advantages of enhanced communication technologies and virtual worlds as meeting places eventually lead toward a lack of actual interaction between people in the physical world?

I can certainly cite a few instances in which communication technologies have hampered my real life more than helping.
For instance, it was only a few weeks ago that I was driving north on I-75 between Cincinnatti and Dayton, when some idiot with a cell tumor neglected to pay attention to the herd of raging automobiles hurtling down the expressway around him and literally ran me off the road while merging not only into my lane...but the exact position where I happened to be driving.
Its fine though...he was nice enough to wave afterward as he drove away and continued his conversation.

This example is a bit acute and perhaps does not do much to illustrate the points I'm about to make...but I just felt like ranting about that jerk. That being said, let me continue on to something more pertinent to the general public.

Many people spend countless hours hooked into the virtual world or worlds of their choice. This has become so prevalent that nearly everyone has heard of game addiction centers opening up in various parts of the world, or seen a parody to this fact such as the "Make Love not Warcaft" episode of SouthPark, or the increasingly popular "EverCrack" picture that circulates around the Net. The list goes on quite far, but I'll stop there for now.

Games and their users aren't the only people who show signs of this trend. Aside from the aforementioned inconsiderate driver, many people have developed strong attachments to their cellphones that seem to border on an addictive level. Facebook, MySpace and similar social networking arenas have become something of a second life for many. Hmmm...Second Life...that sounds familiar for some reason.

I'll give up listing all the various digital environments through which a person can find a way to expend numerous hours of their life. If you are reading this post then you likely know of a few of them already.

What I notice about myself, and wonder about with others, is if the increasing ease of communicating through the internet and/or telephone technologies is leading people down a path that will eventually leave us with little to no reason to get out and do things in the physical world around us.
For some, it is simply a matter of working in digital environments. Couple that with a work-aholic tendency and it doesn't leave much time for doing other things. Whether this is better or worse in any way than being a work-aholic in the real world I can't really say.
For others, the savings of communicating via the telephone is significant versus the price of actually going to visit the person they are trying to contact. Convenience is a definite bonus as well. Its always easier to punch some numbers on a keypad and have a conversation than it is to drive X number of miles to drop by their house and see if they are home.
I will save the discussion of gasoline costs and a night out on the town versus an evening spent enjoying a virtual setting for another post, but these are simply some of the things I consider during my regularly occurring internal debates. I'd love to hear the opinions of others on this matter, as most here are quite familiar with the concepts on a personal level. We can all find blogs and research that debate the instances mentioned above, but I'd rather hear how people actually feel about it themselves first.