In the wee hours of the morning last Sunday, I found myself watching MTV’s “The Real World.” It’s hard to believe something coming from MTV could be so intriguing because I hate those stupid music videos (if you haven’t seen the film “Dreamworlds” or “Dreamworlds II,” I recommend that you obtain a copy somehow.)

The thing I like about “The Real World” is that it’s all about relationships between real people. Although most people don’t get free rent in Boston in exchange for a few hours of volunteer time, and the people on the show tend to be more beautiful than average, at least they’re not acting.

Relationships are what humans are all about. Maybe some people live to sit in a cubicle and crunch numbers all day, but most of us need at least one kindred spirit to be happy. Calculators usually aren’t romanticized in song lyrics and love poems.

A big part of what makes a relationship work is the physical presence of two or more people. Whether it’s reading facial expressions and body language or giving hugs, just being there is important.

Face to face interaction between people is becoming more and more rare in today’s society, however. We’re telecommuting to work, we’re relying heavily on e-mail and faxes, and some of us are actually forming relationships that exist exclusively on the Internet.

I know a few people who have established substantial bonds with people they met on the Internet. Certainly, emotional connections do exist in such relationships, and I suppose they are beneficial to those involved, but they definitely don’t stack up to old-fashioned, in-your-face communications.

The handful of times I met someone on the Internet, I thought, “Oh, this person seems nice, but I wish I could meet him/her.” I decided it wasn’t worth my time to talk to someone I would never meet in person. I would rather interact with “real” people.

Sure, the people I was talking to on the Internet were living, breathing human beings, but I had no idea who they really were. A 10-year-old girl could tell me she was a 50-year-old man and I wouldn’t know the difference. It doesn’t always matter if someone lies about his or her age, but it can create big problems.

There are plenty of real people in the world, but there are an increasing number of fictional people as well.

Besides the individuals who pretend to be people they aren’t on the Internet, we are exposed to tons of fake people through TV and movies. Hollywood gives us characters, not people. Real people don’t look that good. Real lawyers don’t wear 16 inch skirts, either.

Real people are complicated, and they’re difficult to deal with. It’s easier to live other people’s lives than our own.

I’m guilty of this escape tactic. I love going to movies and becoming immersed in another world for a couple of hours. But when those two or three hours are over, I have to leave.

I have to go back to my own little world and my own little problems, and as much as I would like him to be there, Matt Damon can’t help me.

To stay on the Damon page for a while, think of “Good Will Hunting.” When Will, the young genius, tells his therapist, Sean, that Plato, Yeats and a bunch of other dead writers are his friends, Sean doesn’t buy the story. We can’t interact with dead people, and we can’t interact with sitcom characters.

That’s why it bothers me when people say computers are our future.

In the workplace, people can become depressed and less productive if they isolate themselves through e-mail, voice mail and faxes.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say that because they are going into technical fields, they don’t need to worry about their communications skills, but I know that it’s crap.

Almost everybody has to collaborate with someone else to do their jobs, and even if they work alone, they probably have families. Who wants to have parents that can’t communicate?

It’s hard enough getting through puberty without having parents that don’t know how to talk to you.

I think we need to refocus our efforts here. Let’s teach people how to speak, write and listen before we show them how to run Netscape.

People are our future. We need to start investing more into them and less into computers.

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Catherine Conover is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Mapleton. She is features editor of the Daily.