PUBLIC MARKS with tags book & mmog

In his book Out of Control, author Kevin Kelley describes a Las Vegas conference room where a crowd of 5000, led by Pixar co-founder and Rescue on Fractalus co-creator Loren Carpenter, learn to adapt and react as a hive mind as they play a game of 2500 on 2500 Pong. Each half of the auditorium took collective control of each side, registering their individual intent to move in a certain direction with the wand. The input led to a computer, which averaged and relayed the moves to the game, with initially disastrous but eventually workable results.

This week we're talking to Scott Jennings, a man better known as Lum the Mad. He's just released his book Massively Multiplayer Gaming for Dummies, and we talk to him about the world-wide phenomenon that is online gaming.