The drugs may be pumped directly into the water rather than slipped into the populace's Nescafe.

But with First Amendment rights shelved and human rights threatened, the U.S. looks an awful lot like Gaddafi's Libya in the new Facebook game America 2049.

The app attempts to bridge social gaming and social justice by putting you in a MacGyver-meets-Bourne role and presenting some of the pressing issues of our time and perhaps of the not-too-distant future.

The global human rights org behind the app, Breakthrough, describes it this way:

America 2049 is the first Facebook game to integrate the social-networking platform with many other resources, online and off: multimedia and interactive features, historical artifacts, clues planted across the Internet and real-life events at leading cultural institutions nationwide.

A familiar cast of actors volunteered their time for the project, adding a little Hollywood splash. You're likely to recognize some faces like comedian Margaret Cho and Harold Perrineau from "Lost."

You may not wind up saving the world, but you're likely to learn a lot more than you would watering your friend's radishes.

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Crave freelancer Eric Mack is a writer and radio producer based somewhere high in the Rocky Mountains in a "one bar" service area (for both drinks and 3G). He has reported for NPR, Wired, and The New York Times and was previously an editor for AOL. He recently completed his first e-book on the Android OS. Eric is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive. E-mail Eric.