Noncontemporaries MMOG

I think the the thing that we’ve all figured out by now is that in virtual worlds people who do not share the same physical space get to interact with one another synchronously. This is true of phones as well. And videoconferencing. They are, in Schutz’s terminology, contemporaries but not consociates — they share the same time, but not the same space. This is in contrast to different generations of people who, for instance, view monumental architecture or spend time in the same coffee house (“Oscar Wilde sat here”). These people share the same space, but not the same time.

I think someone needs to write a science fiction novel about a virtual world or online game which suddenly and mysteriously becomes inhabited not by non-consociates, but by non-contemporaries: suddenly people from Elizabethan England and paleolithic Java are logging on to the game. Historians and anthropologists scramble to conduct interviews in chat rooms. And then… ok I don’t have a plot, just an idea. But it would be an interesting permutation on the whole space/time thing. So get on that, ok?