JUL 19, 2010 - Forum on Astrology Presents is, unless I miss my guess, the future of the astrological conference. No more booking a hotel, buying a plane ticket and taking days out of your life to interact with some of the brightest minds in the field of astrology. Instead, it's pay your money, sit down at your computer or in front of your Internet TV, and do it all in your PJs if you want. The virtual, in short, is replacing the physical. OK, there are certainly some things that will never be replaced in this fashion. (It could put the whole groupies thing on an entirely different footing, for example. And somehow the notion of buying somebody a drink and sitting down for a chat doesn't seem quite the same if you can't actually lean in and whisper in their ear.) The virtual conference will never entirely replace the physical conference, anymore than phone sex will drive out the squishy kind. But if the successes of Amazon and eBay and Facebook and remote learning teach us anything, it is that virtual space can be much more efficient and in many ways preferable to "meat space." This year's October 1-3 Forum on Astrology Internet Conference shapes up to be a major test of virtual astrology get-togethers. (And to think those AFAN conference calls in the 1980s could have been a seed for something like this!)
