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Sunday, June 6, 2004 |
I do find myself wondering -- with all three technologies in this
session -- what's the point? I'm not persuaded that these technologies
add value to the more fundamental matter of people actually speaking
to each other. Maybe my luddism is showing -- I'm obviously not hip to
'activist gaming' -- but I'm not sure these folks are clear on what the
specific problem is - the 'what's missing' -- that their proposed tools
are solving. Seems to me to be inescapable essential that people
actually speak to each other -- that change in the world will come from
changes in what we do, which in turn will come from what we say, to
each other and to ourselves.
I can see that this is a new and potentially useful new media channel, a way to get new ideas to new people. Jon Ramer of Interra,
sitting behind me, offered the perspectice of activist games as a very
effective learning system -- the game as a way for epople to learning
about how to organize the the 'real' world, to share best practices, to
'interoperate' together. (Does that mean, like, 'actually speak to each
other? :-)
4:19:21 PM 
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Celia Pearce of UC Irvine working with Buckminster Fuller Institute
on a 'assymetical' game with players as stewards of the real world -
not just a virtual game world. Players use mltiple devices -- PCs,
phones, PDAs -- to simluate and deploy 'bottom up' solutions to
sustainability on local, regional and global level.
Bucky's World Game idea is some 40 years old, proposed initially I
think for the 1967 World Fair. Read the GeoScope chapter in Bucky's
book Critical Path. (I played a 'manual' -- month long, intensive --
version in the early 70s; that experience probably did more than any
single thing to shape my perspective on the world and my role in it.)
Computer technology has finally caught up with the potential.
In this digital versiona, players would run simulations of mission
scenarios for various world situations, and then work on thos
emissions. She offeres the example of paper vs plastic -- vs. perhaps
fabric. Proof is in the pudding of course, since life cycle
assesssments -- which that examplpe would be -- are notoriously
sensitive to opening assumptions defining data and simulation model.
(In response to my question, she suggests that all 'missions' will be
'sponsored' -- eg by Sierra Club -- so people willknow what those
assumptions are. Interesting idea -- to it could bottleneck the
generation of new missions.)
Players would get points for action -- perhaps more for effective action?
They're conceiving it as an 'open source metagame,' so people and
organizations could bring in their own game modules -- a great idea.
Celia: In a way, we're always playing this game. I'd just like us to me more conscious that we doing that!
3:52:32 PM
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OK, either Ron's hit his stride or I started listenting. Four ideas.
1. a meeting of people charged to come up
with good ideas will come up with fewer good ideas that the same people
asked to go to their offices, come up with good ideas and come together
to share them. 'If you respect the read-think-write cycle, the number
of ideas goes up by 40%. And it's import that you write, not speak --
as in the traditional 'speak-promote' cycle.
2. Groups - at least highly effficient groups - tend to know who's good at what.
3. The half life of groups -- effective peaks about half way through
their life, and again just before their end of lifetime. (Obviously for
groups with a defined lifetime.)
4: HEGs know what doesn't fit. His example: The Crying Indian pollution
ad was highly memorable but only 1% effectuve at changing behavior. A
positive remake was 40% effective -- but the environmental groups that
funded it wouldn't pull it... because the first one SHOULD have worked!
Q: Metrics of efffectiveness? Number of ideas isn't particularly interesting
A: The other metrics we want to use is divergent thinking. Has been
used with Supreme Court decisions. Assumption: more divergence is
better, IFF people have to come up with a decision (which the Supreme
Court does).
I'd like to see ideas, divergence, conversion, implementation AND achieving desired results with minimal side effects.
Ron's IdeaTree software - a combination or mind mapping, visual
blogging, annotatting relationships - focuses on 'how ideas relate' by
displaying the relationships among the nodes. Unfortunately he's
demoing this with a thin gruel of content, conveying nothing
compleelling about its potential. At least not to me.
3:33:50 PM
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Blogging the PlaNetWork conference at the Presdio in San Francisco, which has a strong focus this year on the
conscious use of information technologies and the Internet ... in
creating a truly democratic, ecologically sane and socially just future.
Just heard Arno Scharl present his EcoMonitor
'environmental web monitoring.' -- which I expected to be about
sophisticated data syntehesis, but seemed to be more about symantic
mapping of how specified words and ideas show up in global media space.
I guess 'environmental' means different thigns to different people. :-)
Just starting, Ron Newman on 'the dynamics of highly effective groups.' Too vague for me so far.
What I'm waiting for: Celia Peirce and the folks from the Bucky Fuller Insitute talking about their 'Spaceship Earth Game,'
a massively multi-player game... originally conceived as a digital
sequel to the World Game, Buckminster Fuller[base ']s large-scale board game
of world resource distribution. (The game takes a bottom-up approach
through missions in which players deploy large numbers of people on
multiple devices, via e-mail, blogs, Internet and SmartMob tactics, to
take positive action now.)
3:22:11 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Gil Friend.
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