virtual - introduction

‘Virtual’ literally means ‘to have the effect of, though not actually being so’.
You could consider a print of a famous artwork to be a ‘virtual copy’ in that it has the appearance of the original but none of the qualities of texture, paint, being hand-made, being unique, etc.
As you might expect, examples of ‘virtual’ often include the term ‘virtual’. For example, ‘virtual reality’ refers to a computer based reality experienced by a computer user often wearing goggles to ‘see and hear’ another world. Other examples of ‘virtual’ include: virtual classrooms, virtual corporations and virtual communities.
The common thread in each of these cases is that they mimic the ‘real’ or ‘traditional’ classroom, corporation or community in some ways and not others.
The symbol we have used for 'virtual' is the letter 'v'.