Google Perpetuates Prisoner's Dilemma

GChat decided to add a nifty little feature to its incredibly addicting and time-wasting application: An invisibility cloak. Granted, this cloak is meant to shield you from prospective chatters, allowing you to creep on others while they are online without them seeing you. However, you can still chat with anyone at your heart's desire...and they still can't see your availability.

Okay, the idea that one could potentially use the idea of Prisoner's Dilemma pertaining to GChat is not an original idea. In fact, a Gawker post successfully explains the idea of cooperation versus defection, remaining invisible rather than ratting out your fellow GChatters. In a technologically-defined world, it's amazing to think that we've come down to this--worrying what people might think if you sign onto GChat and then immediately become invisible. Will a friend be offended by the quickness of your action upon seeing his name online? Will you have the need to defect others and make their invisibility aware to the world? What are you doing being invisible anyway?

In a way, we can view the Prisoner's Dilemma in GChat as a microcosm of what occurs during situations where the stakes are higher than just being embarrassed in a virtual world. If you are one of a team of two revisionist states and both of you are building up nuclear warheads with each other's full knowledge, what do you do? Do you rat out your competition, thereby jeopardizing your chances for obtaining nuclear power but also blockading the contentious arms race that was going so well? Do you keep silent, in hopes that other countries won't let on, won't ask to investigate, and your competition won't rat you out as well?

So many options. So many consequences. Such is the nature of Prisoner's Dilemma.