This Slate Magazine article on gaming cheats is a great example of a trend that is gaining steam -- the societal and technological implications of increased connection and community on every day life. In this case, it's what happens when computer gaming (which used to be a mostly solo game) enters into the social arena (full disclosure. Years and years ago, way back in the days of DOS games, there was a text only football game that took the names/weights/speeds of NFL players and created a very simple game that allowed two players to "compete" and call plays while sitting at the same table. I, of course, am a SF 49er fan. My buddy was a Raider fan, and we'd stage games between the two teams, most of which he won because the Raiders were a better team at the time, with bigger/faster players, which was all the game really focused on. So one day I discovered I could open up the 49er file in text mode and edit the size of the players. I quickly had a backfield of 400 pound running backs with 3.5 speed over the 40 yard dash, and my unsuspecting comrade was watching his defense be subjected to long run after long run. "I can't figure out what happened!" he said).
Anyway, game cheats have been around for a long time, but now that the social impact of games is much more pronounced, the ability to cheat (hack/tweak, you pick the term) the game moves from being a solo issue to one that the online community needs to deal with. Turns out it's pretty hard, and that the muscle we have built up in the real world about dealing with crime/cheats/social behaviors is not as extensible into the online social worlds now swirling all around us. But the trend is clear.
For another example, lord help us, there is yet another Second Life story in my morning delivery of newspapers, this time courtesy of the WSJ. On the plus side, instead of writing about naked congo lines, the paper (weekend journal, online subscription required) is writing about the relationship implications of online relationships to the real world. I have a few quibbles with the story (please, could someone make a rule that says NEVER AGAIN show a picture of an avatar next to the picture of the real person? It's lame; and if you are going to highlight SL and then note that 30m people participate in online worlds, you'd do better by noting that an almost insignificant percent of that is in SL, with WoW as the by far leader.) Still, the story does a good job of linking the online/offline worlds and examining the real world relationship damages that can ensue. Money quote buried at the very end of the story:
"Sitting alone in the living room in front of the television, Mrs. Hoogerstraat says she worries it will be years before her husband realizes that he's traded his real life for a pixilated fantasy existence, one that doesn't include her."
As I noted in a previous post about identity, there remain lots of problems to be solved in this intersection between the real and virtual, and between the community and friends we have in the physical world and the net of social and community sites building up in our online worlds.
Clearly, the implications from a communications standpoint are immense. In the same way society is looking to better understand social dynamics online, we are looking to understand how people receive and process information in the different worlds in which they live. Call me biased, but I think those who look at the changes in the world and predict grim results for those of us in the communications industry are missing the point. Our world(s) are getting bigger, not smaller.