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March 09, 2008, 12:37 AM ET
Screen Names
When they were young, my children played Dungeons & Dragons. I confess to never understanding the game. But this week Gary Gygax, the inventor of D&D died and I found myself reading several obituaries of his life with an eye toward gaining a bit of knowledge about my children’s past.
Adam Rogers, a senior editor at Wired, comments in the New York Times, “… the most popular books on earth are fantasy novels about wizards and magic swords.” In my childhood days, pop culture centered on weekly radio shows like “The Green Hornet” and “Captain Midnight.” My children had imaginary flaming swords and rolled special dice to get into their new worlds and I carefully guarded my magic decoder ring. We share a type of inter-generational role-playing.
Perhaps Rogers is correct when he says that “Every Gmail login, every instant-messaging screen name, every public photo collection on Flickr, every blog-commenting alias is a newly manifested identity, a character playing the real world.” Is it true that we all want to be someone else?
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