The Artificial World of Emails

Many of us are on the internet (right now for example), busily engaged in sending emails back and forth about everything and nothing. The speed and efficiency is a wonder in itself. I deeply appreciate the internet in that it is a rather unifying force and a force to be reckoned with. Emails are like ultra speedy letters that can reach a multitude of persons  at the same time, if you wish.
They are however, not a substitute for friendship, or any form of intimate relationship. They are a way of reaching out in order to form a friendship or to have a romantic partner, but they are not the real thing. Call them a means to an end but not an end in itself. How can you have a real friend you have never seen? How can you possibly fall in love with someone whose voice you have not heard, whose face you have not looked, whose presence you have not felt? You cannot, I say. A substitute is not the real thing, it is a replacement, it is a shadow, it has no substance.
Why would people be satisfied with replacements or substitutes? Because an illusion of reality is better than nothing. If you can't have the real thing then settle for the illusion, in the minds of many people; so I allege. They believe it is real and maintain their cyber friendships and romances are true to the core. Are they? Doesn't their belief system fly in the face of what we humans are all about? Are we not about flesh and bone? We're not mechanical entities, a set of fingers flying over a keyboard.
Illusions may be handy for a short while, but in the long run they will dissipate and eventually turn into dust.