As a member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), I like to keep up with their publication IEEE Spectrum. They've been increasing their online presence over the last year or so and have been incorporating more interactive features on their site, like blogs.

I'm a big fan of the print magazine because they provide great stories on interesting technical topics. Now I'm an even bigger fan of the online publication. Why? They have a blog called "The Sandbox" dedicated to "the latest in gaming". And it's not just about the latest whiz-bang creation. They actually take a big picture approach.

One one recent post they bring up a sort of hypocrasy in mental health. There's discussion in the mential health professions of considering video gaming as an addiction, you know, like alcholism. But is gaming anti-social like alchoholism, or more anti-social like avid book reading?

What a lot of people outside the gaming world don't realize is that online gaming is becoming a very cool place to interact. If you've heard about social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster then you have seen the future of online social gaming networks.

Currently one of the more popular immersive environments is World of Warcraft. In this online game, you show up on your computer (and to anyone else who is playing) as an "avatar" or a cartoonish representation of your game character. What makes this social friendly, is that you are able to talk to other players either just for fun or for collabortion to reach certain goals within the game.

As is true for "offline" friendships, the more times you see and interact with familiar characters, you get to know a bit about thier personalities and get an idea of how you get along with them. There are some you like playing along with better than others, and so you may get to a point where you coordinate playing time so that you can work together more often.

Now it is true that people can take gaming a bit too far and lose touch with reality. That is, they take the game too seriously. YouTube is full of videos showing examples of this. This kind of behavior has more to do with the personality of the individual as opposed to the outlet for their obsession. If it was not online gameing, then perhaps it would be alcohol, other drugs, or smoking.

At least when gaming in social networks, there is some interaction with other people. As the phenomena grows, more people will understand it this may even become as mainstream as the local neighborhood get together.

But does that really happen anymore?