Category: Links

A fas­ci­nat­ing pro­file piece on Paul Linebarg­er aka Cord­wain­er Smith, psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare spe­cial­ist as well as writer of sub­ver­sive sci­ence fic­tion such as Scanners.

Kei­ta Taka­hashi on some of his cur­rent think­ing and of course the love­ly, love­ly park: “Of course, what I want most from the park is for it to be a space for chil­dren and adults, as well as the dogs or squir­rels in the park to be able to play, although it might be a lit­tle bit dangerous.”

I’m pret­ty sure it’s not help­ful or accu­rate to liken gam­i­fi­ca­tion’s crit­ics to the Tea Par­ty. Some of gam­i­fi­ca­tion’s ideas are inter­est­ing. But they should be applied with care and moderation.

“The sin­gle great­est thing Nid­hogg does is that it under­stands how to enter­tain a crowd as well as its play­ers.” a won­der­ful exam­ple of a videogame with per­for­ma­tive qualities.

“Nu nieuwe dien­sten als Foursquare, Run­k­eep­er en tal­loze andere ons han­de­len in data vast­leggen, en onze pro­gressie in het lev­en kun­nen meten, zullen onze lev­ens steeds meer aspecten overne­men die we voorheen alleen kenden uit games.” Juha snapt het, en legt het lekker helder uit. De ten­toon­stelling waar dit voor geschreven is (over nat­u­ral­isme) lijkt me ook de moeite waard.

“Spy Par­ty is two-play­er game with one play­er tak­ing the role of the spy and the oth­er tak­ing the role of the sniper. The spy may be one of any num­ber of par­ty guests, joined by an ambas­sador and a dou­ble agent. The spy has four tasks to com­plete: Bug the ambas­sador, steal a stat­ue, trans­fer a micro­film and con­tact the dou­ble agent. The sniper has just one task: iden­ti­fy and assas­si­nate the spy.” This game sounds excel­lent. I want to play it now.

“So here it is: all recent urban plans I saw where based on the assump­tion that some sort of growth (demo­graph­ic, eco­nom­ic) would pro­pel the city back into the lime­light. Now that this assump­tion has been slashed we need to rethink our urban strate­gies. What will the city look like in a con­tract­ing world?”

An awe­some two-play­er indie duel­ing game with some won­der­ful per­for­ma­tive qualities.

I’m told that if you look these guys up in SF you’re treat­ed to a bizarre ARG-like experience.

Once again a love­ly This hap­pened – Utrecht report from Iskan­der. Glad to see the theme of “think­ing through mak­ing” shone through this time around.

“The only way to be a Post Dig­i­tal busi­ness is to be a thor­ough­ly, deeply, mas­sive­ly dig­i­tal one. To be dig­i­tal in cul­ture not just in capa­bil­i­ties. To know how to iter­ate in pub­lic, to do exper­i­ments not research, to recog­nise that it’s quick­er and bet­ter to code some­thing than it is to describe it in meet­ings. You need to be part of the wider dig­i­tal cul­ture, to have good shar­ing habits, to give cred­it where it’s due, and at the very least to know how to do ellipses in Pro­cess­ing.” Duly noted.

“Rather than mere­ly a place to do work, the choice of a like-mind­ed cowork­ing com­mu­ni­ty with the right amount of diver­si­ty and expo­sure to new skills and ideas could be as impor­tant as choos­ing a neigh­bor­hood to live in.” A sol­id overview of the cow­er­ing phe­nom­e­non. Although I love the con­cept, I have rarely seen it work well.

“…when the ecosys­tem stops reward­ing com­plex­i­ty, it is the peo­ple who fig­ure out how to work sim­ply in the present, rather than the peo­ple who mas­tered the com­plex­i­ties of the past, who get to say what hap­pens in the future.” Which is to say: always be aware of your own actions, pre­vent them from becom­ing bureaucratic.

Sol­id advice from Eric Zim­mer­man on com­mon pit­falls of edu­ca­tion­al game design. I can cer­tain­ly relate to many of these.

“I sus­pect the lag also con­tributes to the extreme unease the sys­tem some­times cre­ates – we’re deep in the uncan­ny val­ley of inter­ac­tion.” Chris finds Kinect slight­ly scary, and requir­ing an Amer­i­can size liv­ing room.

“How to Live Safe­ly is actu­al­ly a nov­el, about a man named Charles Yu search­ing for his father in quan­tum space-time. He lives in Minor Uni­verse 31, with sci­ence fic­tion wrapped around an inner core of approx­i­mate­ly 17 per­cent real­i­ty (by vol­ume). He’s a time-machine repair­man, armed with his TM-31 Recre­ation­al Time Trav­el Device, TAMMY the slight­ly neu­rot­ic user inter­face, and Ed, his nonex­is­tent but onto­log­i­cal­ly valid dog.” On the to-read list.

“The pur­pose of the Cyborg, as well as his own home­o­sta­t­ic sys­tems, is to pro­vide an orga­ni­za­tion­al sys­tem in which such robot-like prob­lems are tak­en care of auto­mat­i­cal­ly and uncon­scious­ly, leav­ing man free to explore, to cre­ate, to think, and to feel.” A good design guide­line, if you ask me.

“…there’s going to be an inter­est­ing job com­ing — some­where between design and com­mu­ni­ca­tions — expressed in behav­iour. And some­thing to do with ani­ma­tion and some­thing to do with chore­og­ra­phy.” I don’t think that’s a new job, I think it’s inter­ac­tion design. The descrip­tions here are spot on though, and embed­ded behav­iour is sure to come to the fore in the com­ing time.

Games for edu­ca­tion is a top­ic close to my heart. How­ev­er, I found this arti­cle to be a dis­ap­point­ing mess of hype and hunch­es with the occa­sion­al good idea hid­den between them.

“…the most fun­da­men­tal acts of design are essen­tial­ly a com­bi­na­tion of tal­ent and prac­tice. Like a sport or a musi­cal instru­ment – per­for­mance, not process…” Of inter­est main­ly because I am look­ing for new ways to frame design for stu­dents and trainees. Meth­ods in stead of process­es might be a help­ful approach.