The virtual world we have now - the World Wide Web and multiplayer games of various shapes and sizes - is simply not exciting or interesting enough to enjoy it fully. We have places to communicate with each other using text, sound and image, we have crude and simplistic approximations of what it might feel to be an adventurer in a mythical land, we have, one might say, an Internet currency - but not much else.
It's very easy to spend a whole day in front of the screen browsing what the Web grants us - especially the sites that provide maximum content for minimum of time - without achieving anything of even microscopic importance. Watching a hundred let's plays is barely an accomplishment worthy of congratulation, and arguing with people of strange names on forums about the color of the dress many would call "a waste of time" without hesitation. Is it enough to call it exciting, though? Granted, it gives us the quick pleasure we're getting trained to accept better than long-term happiness, and perhaps one with a dull life might survive this way, but would they be excited?
It's not to say we don't have some wonderful activities to partake. Being able to discuss an item of clothes or an ancient book with a person on the other side of the planet is an achievement for engineers and programmers who've built tools to do so, and they deserve praise of washing away physical borders. Being able to book a place in a restaurant on the other side of the ocean because you'll be in the country in a few days thanks to either a giant all-inclusive ship or an amazingly-quick airplane (or, hell, an underwater speed train) is an opportunity to use. Same goes to buying items, partaking in group activities without leaving one's seat, having a good laugh over a first person shooter game...
Still, it's hard to have the same fun of virtuality as of reality. Online activities might joy our brains, but our bodies get weaker the longer we sit and play, talk or browse, and the bodily enjoyment is an equally important part of good living. If the only way of my running on the foggy landscapes of a fictional world is by pressing one of the four keys on the keyboard, then it's barely exciting, challenging or interesting. If I'm unable to see people I'm talking to when the topic is the Internet, game theory or language, then I'm not as engaged into the whole conversation, for I can't sense other persons in physical sense - see the way their brows arch when they're angry or annoyed, hear their voice's modulation to guide me to what they feel on the matter, observe their body language overall... All of it are important aspects of social engagement, and if they're missing, to me it means we aren't doing good enough.
The perfect virtual world for me would be a world where I can feel the things I'm near by touching them, smelling them or licking them - essentially, the same as what real world might produce. We're a long way away from it: touch-projecting gadgets are mere prototypes at the moment, and the rest of the senses (excluding the quite good visuals and audials) aren't even there. Such a major implementation of immersion, no doubt, will cost a lot - processing, physical memory, the immersion devices themselves - and will take a lot of time to even achieve technologically.
Still, I believe that not only can we do it - I believe that I may be enjoying a prototype of such accoplishments in my lifetime. That is, if the whole ASI ordeal will not cover us whole - and then, it might be that the ASI will be the exact point I'm waiting for.