How can you ever claim to understand..?

How could you ever claim to understand new phenomena today if you are not testing it out yourself.

Teemu Arina:" Yesterday Esko Kilpi said to me that it’s very hard, next to impossible to understand the possibilities of a certain reality unless you are part of it yourself. This applies to social technologies. If you have never used something like a blog, a wiki or Facebook, you could never completely understand its possibilities just by reading about it and observing it from aside. Typical way for an outsider is to rationalize it with pros and cons, but that never reveals the true essence or truly helps you to “get it”. Therefore, most of my work goes into explaining people what possibilities social technologies may provide, but I often struggle with people who just don’t get it and probably never will, unless they try it themselves."

(Emphasis mine)

This leads Teemu on to Plato's virtual reality (via Second Life)....worth reading as so often.