How Social Media Can Reinvent Civilization's Genome: A Hint from Spore, a Game Based on Genetics

It's been interesting coming up for air after several weeks of book-writing to see that it's time for the introduction of Spore , a new simulation game that allows people to build entire virtual ecologies and civilizations through their inventive software. I had highlighted Spore in Chapter 8 of the Content Nation book, which is entitled "The New Survival: How Content Nation Redefines the Future of Humanity." Spore is a very interesting example of how social media is capable of extending the very essence of what it means to be human into a whole new realm. Here's the section from Chapter 8 on Spore:

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A hint as to how efficient the human species can be at reinventing the organisms of civilization through social media came recently from the coming introduction of a new computer game based on mastering the evolution of species. Spore is a game that enables people to create their own worlds of virtual creatures that they can design themselves and share with others via the Web. Spore was under development in 2008 when its creators decided to get people involved in the product ahead of the release of the actual gaming software by releasing a software tool that would allow people to develop and share the creatures that they could use in their game once that it was released.

When the Spore development team first decided to release the Creature Creator software in June 2008, their thought was that they might be able to encourage people to develop about 100,000 new kinds of evolving creatures by the time that the software was scheduled to launch in September 2008. Much to their surprise, the number of Spore creatures created by people downloading Creature Creator had surpassed the 100,000 mark. Within about a week Spore users had created and shared more than 1,000,000 different types of Spore creatures with one another and within a month they had created more than 1.8 million Spore creatures - more than the estimated 1.5 million known species alive today on our planet. At this point the Spore development team is expecting that by September 2008 Spore users would have created for sharing about 20 million different kinds of software-based species - more than 13 times the number of species living on the earth today.

The Spore phenomenon is certainly an indication of the number of creative computer game players in the world, but it's all an indication of how quickly humans can conceive of and share different ways to adapt to and survive in an environment through social media. The impetus to be creative is a universal human trait, not limited to a few fortunate people whose works of art have been played in concert halls or hung in art galleries. Combine that essential human creativity in response to survival challenges with the ability to create altruistic bonds via social media publishing and there are more patterns that could emerge for human survival than exist in nature for every kind of living being on earth.

Social media will release an explosion of ways in which human genes can be extended to create bonds of trust and collaboration that will lead to rapidly evolving strategies for surviving and thriving in a rapidly changing world. We have developed a relative handful of successful civilizations through traditional publishing in 7,000 years compared to what may emerge from the experiments of people who can define any number of altruistic relationships through social media.

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Chapter 8 has lots of neat insights into how publishing in general and social media in particular is an extension of our genetic code, but wait until you get to Chapter 10 when Content Nation peers into the future of humankind in earnest. I hope that it will be kind of a "whoa" moment for you!