I was once invited to see a show house set up by Microsoft to demonstrate the company's vision of the future of the digital home. They rented a gorgeous mansion in Notting Hill and kitted it out with lots of high-tech toys that used their software: plasma screens, media centres, wireless networks, and games consoles. Then they invited press and partners to check it out.

Microsoft's vision was technically exciting, but rather bleak if you care about people being in the same room together. Mum was in the kitchen cooking, looking up recipes on a touch-screen computer. Dad was in the living room, watching sport that he'd stored on his multimedia PC's hard drive. The kids were upstairs in their rooms, instant messaging their friends. They were all in the house, but nobody was really home. In the digital autism of Microsoft's vision, everyone was screening out the world around them.

I think this is partly what William Gibson meant when he had a character in his latest novel say that cyberspace has 'everted' – that is, turned itself inside out. It's not that we've left real life for the Matrix. It's that the Matrix has materialised around us in real life. For much of the affluent world, life is a series of digital interactions, with the odd break for a pee, a snack, or a nap.

According to the IPA, people in the UK watched 3.85 hours of TV per day in the first quarter of this year (http://www.ipa.co.uk/documents/TVTrends07_Qtr1.pdf). According to comScore, (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1459) people in the UK are the most active internet users in Europe, spending an average of 34.4 hours a month online at home and at work. And that's the average: many office workers spend the bulk of their day, as I do, in front of a PC monitor. When I commute I see many, many heads bowed before the hand-held gods of text, RSS, e-mail, and mobile games. Who can blame them? It beats staring at the back of someone's neck for two hours day.

There's no question that much good comes from this digital cornucopia. Being able to read and think about interesting things when you're commuting is great, and people have always put their minds elsewhere, in books, or newspapers or magazines. Who has not felt their heart sink when patting a familiar pocket for the book they're reading, only to realise they've left it home and must brave their journey without it? We've always escaped into culture when nature – our immediate surroundings – seemed to have little to offer.

Yet I think we underestimate the extent to which our lives are now lived in a sort of digital dream world, in the same way we underestimate how much we drink. If you're honest, how much time do you spend in front of a screen, your mind somewhere other than where you are in physical time and space? I suspect if one kept a screen diary, the total number of hours would be deeply worrying. One colleague confesses that when he's staring at a laptop while his partner is watching TV, she will cry out, "Come back! Where are you going?" as though his body, as well as his attention, had left the room. It's a good question. Where are we going?

There's a lovely parody of the virtual world of Second Life here (http://www.getafirstlife.com/) which pokes fun at Second Life by contrasting its digital pleasures with the analogue satisfactions of real life. If this were a joke that was only relevant to the residents of Second Life, it might be one that we could all enjoy. However, the truth is that many of us could close the laptop, turn of the phone, switch off the TV, put down the game controller, unplug the MP3 player and log onto our First Life a little bit more than we do. As Get a First Life points out: "Go outside. Membership is free."

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Michael Parsons, now editor of CNET.co.uk, was once European correspondent for The Red Herring magazine, and spent five years working in Silicon Valley and worrying about technology. He can be reached at michael.parsons@cnet.co.uk

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