links for 2010-10-13

“sev­er­al fac­tors sug­gest that the impulse to make life as excit­ing as a game is not with­out a cer­tain naivety” A dis­cus­sion of a curi­ous per­va­sive game with some good insight into the issues sur­round­ing every­day real­i­ty with games.

“sub­tract­ing an hour from the life of anoth­er human being isn’t to be tak­en light­ly. It’s almost vio­lent. It’s cer­tain­ly inva­sive. Shared cal­en­dars are ves­sels you fill by tak­ing things away from oth­er peo­ple” Hav­ing to com­bine being an entre­peneur with being a design­er, mak­ing sure enough time is avail­able for cre­ative cycles is a real challenge.

‘De mon­di­ale cri­sis dicteert ons onze lev­enswan­del. We moeten ons lev­en daad­w­erke­lijk veran­deren, nieuwe lev­ensvor­men ontwikke­len, deel­ne­men aan ecol­o­gis­che en economis­che zelfhulpprogramma’s. We kun­nen niet anders dan “doen”. Of het ons nu bevalt of niet, dat speelt geen rol meer.’ An inter­est­ing inter­view with philoso­pher Peter Slo­ter­dijk on the social effects of the glob­al cri­sis. I cer­tain­ly iden­ti­fy with the feel­ing of impend­ing doom urg­ing one to prag­mat­ic action, or prac­tice as Slo­ter­dijk calls it.

“The Evap­o­ra­tive Cool­ing Effect … occurs when the most high val­ue con­trib­u­tors to a com­mu­ni­ty real­ize that the com­mu­ni­ty is no longer serv­ing their needs any more and so there­fore, leave.” Inter­est­ing obser­va­tion. I recog­nise the behav­iour from my own expe­ri­ences. It is some­thing I think we have instinc­tive­ly man­aged to avert for This hap­pened — Utrecht using sev­er­al mech­a­nisms. But in oth­er cas­es I might need to pay spe­cial atten­tion not to fall in its trap.