It is difficult to imagine life without the Internet. It has made available affordable, real-time video conferencing; a plethora of information (some of which is even true); an unbelievable variety of downloadable entertainment (some of which is even legal); the chance to find your true love among a large pool of candidates (some of whom are even of the gender they claim to be); and, of course, the ability to hunt online.

In January 2005, John Lockwood and Howard Giles became the first people to hunt collaboratively even though they were separated by a distance of 45 miles. From the comfort of his home, using a rifle connected to a mechanism that allowed it to be aimed and fired via the Internet, Giles shot and severely wounded a wild hog eating from a feed box on Lockwood's ranch in Texas. Unfortunately, since the hog was only wounded by Giles's bullet, Lockwood had to deliver the final two shots in person. This nonstandard method of hunting generated a substantial amount of debate, with bills banning Internet hunting being introduced in a number of states shortly thereafter.

Although times have changed since Rousseau analyzed the problem of collaborative hunting in A Discourse on Inequality (1775), the basic problem remains the same. As Lockwood and Giles found out, two people need to collaborate in order to ensure that the hunt is successful.