By The Book

Just so you know I haven't been slacking. I am a little less than halfway through reading Edward Castronova's book "Symthetic Worlds" (which you can click to purchase on the sidbar) so I offer you this nugget of insight to ponder while you're waiting for the next installment of this blog.

Castronova discusses a mechanism behind migration from any one place to another where people who are not doing well in the place they are at will be willing to accept the risks associated with moving to a new place and starting over there. In the U.S. this might make you think of covered wagons heading west, or even more specifically, the migration to gold rushes in San Francisco and Alaska. But also think in terms of virtual worlds as another option. Not doing well financially, socially, or achievement-wise in a "real world" place? No problem - find an MMORPG that suits you and try starting over there. If this happens on a large scale, this could impact the workforce numbers in our flesh and blood world. Some other side effects would be that people may get counted as unemployed only because that statistic limits its vision to planet Earth. What would the impact be of people dropping off of tax and Social Security rolls? Which services would flourish, fail or be unaffected?

Food and electricity come to mind as industries that would not be impacted. What about the automobile and gasoline industries? - will virtual worlds lead to a "greener" Earth by keeping people more people at home? I'm finding it a little harder to come up with an example of an industry that would grow as a result of massive online "employment." It would have to be something that give the player/worker more return for their time spent. Maybe computer sales would double as each player operates multiple characters at a time (or at least monitors if users run multiple sessions using VMware). Can you think of any?