Is Our Concept Of "The World" Coming To An End?

The title of this post is really for shock value... but it came from this:

I figure if Twitter is having issues on a Friday... it must mean the world is in true peril!


Jokes aside, the importance of electronic communication in our society is not even a question anymore... it's a given. So what happens when these tools are unavailable or we aren't able to access them? Well, the world as we know it practically falls apart. This is very apparently in my office, where if/when the network goes down, nearly everyone in the office says "I guess I'll go home and hopefully the network will be up later so I can finish my work". THAT'S how dependent we are on technology!


And thats's just a single server.... when the power goes out the world practically stops. Heck, when we had that huge power outage a few years back we couldn't even pump gas to put it in our cars!


Either way, I'm on a tangent here (surprise, surprise). These tools do make us more interconnected (and therefore more vulnerable), but I came across this excellent video from TED where Jane McGonigal is trying to convince the crowd about how Gaming can actually change the world as we know it.


Take a peek and tell me what you think. I think it's a stretch to say gaming can save the world, but I think the novel idea here is "how can we organize the world to be more like a game... with targetted incentives and a constant sense of reward, even when the challenge is difficult and takes a long time to achieve?"


PS: She talks about World of Warcraft a lot... so check out the title link for a peek into my WoW life. :)