In his excellent and fascinating book Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova talks a lot about the permeability of membranes between meatspace and virtual worlds. He was mostly talking from an economics point of view, but the analogy still stands for other forms of interchange. Especially when you hear that the membranes are now permeable both ways, with a proof-of-concept meatspace control panel that can control its virtual equivalent – and vice versa.