And a Ghost (in the Machine) Will Follow You Home

The term 'ghost in the machine' was coined by Gilbert Lyle, a British philosopher, to ridicule Rene Descartes, a French philosopher (why can't those people ever get along?). In later usage, especially, it refers to the primitive impulses residual in our modern brains.

As Disney delves deeper into digital worlds, their 'ghost in the machine' is our flesh-and-blood enjoyment of the theme parks, and their challenge is how to distill those 'primitive impulses' into immaculate code.

In an interview yesterday with Forbes, Disney Online Managing Director Paul Yanover didn't mention any ghosts but he did provide some enlightenment into what 'digital experiences' Disney thinks its customers want.

According to Yanover, Disney Online is all about the 'zeitgeist (another philosopher!): the essence of Disney brought to the home computer and encapsulated on the new home page instead of spread throughout a network of sites. Yanover wants Disney.com visitors to smell the bakery on Main Street while clicking over to play a Phineas & Ferb game or plan a new reservation or (perhaps most of all) visit a virtual world.

Today's kids live most of the time in virtual worlds powered by iPods, iPhones, and social media. Disney is aware that tomorrow's theme park parents will be far different from today's theme park parents. They'll be a tough crowd. Yanover doesn't spend much time discussing the company's inevitable full-bore expansion into virtual worlds, similar to the enormously popular Second Life and World of Warcraft, but he drops a tantalizing hint that our culture is entering a 'trans-media world where both platforms and experiences are merging into one another'.

Those worlds are sure to contain both happy haunts and troublesome ghosts.