Wagner James Au has a great post over at Gigaom about the growing industry of people in China who play video games like World of Warcraft and then sell the items they acquire in-game to US and European game players on eBay. It’s a bizarre world we live in these days and this is a good picture of one of the stranger parts of it. If you haven’t seen Au’s blog on Second Life, New World Notes, it’s totally worth checking out too.

Can’t help but think of the latest episode of the podcast Technometria, a great show that amongst other things referenced this week a quote (I can’t remember who from) stating that in the future of computing “the world would become magical.” I thought that was shockingly sad, as the world is so magical already! In fact, I can’t help but think that properly tending the relationship between the magic being created on the web and the the magic that already exists in meat-space (as it’s called) is essential. Failure to do so seems very dangerous.

Not sure how to put the above two paragraphs together, but I think they are related. Just a few things I’m thinking about. I don’t think that Chinese gold farms are particularly magical, but there is something going on there. There is a lot of magic emerging online. Dealing with information overload alone may require some serious magic, for example.