"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful." - Edward R. Murrow
Good point. I knew a guy once who all but flunked out of college because of an IRC addiction. He'd spend all his time in the lab, IRC'ing and not much more. Weird.
I think it has hampered the progress of at least a portion of humanity. You could argue that time wasters will always find an alternative, but TV and MMORPGS have addictive qualities and have left people wondering where lost months/years have gone.
As someone in the gamification space (ugh, I hate that word) I always wanted to make some sort of dashboard/hud that could represent your life in RPG style stats. There are multiples companies that have attempted this for various niches (fitness, diet, checkins) but only a few for life in general. (Besides those twitter-like sites where you just sort of post that you did something.)
Perhaps it could work like D&D except the Dungeon Masters are more like life coaches. They create the quests (goals) and decide how much experience each is worth. The toughest part is that you can't really compare the players against each other since in life you really don't all have equal opportunities like you do at the start of a video game. But, people are really motivated by competition so maybe there's a way to make it work.
