Research potential of virtual worlds: what environment for what methodology?

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(Cross-posted at Terra Nova) Science Mag has an article entitled "The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds" by William Sims Bainbridge which gives a pretty good overview of how games such as MMO have a "great potential as sites for research in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as in human-centered computer science.

Although the examples are well-known now, what is interesting in this article is the emphasis on the environment and methodological choices: which environment can be tight to what methodologies as described in the following excerpt:

"In terms of scientific research methodologies, one can do interviews and ethnographic research in both environments, but other methods would work better in one than the other. SL is especially well designed to mount formal experiments in social psychology or cognitive science, because the researcher can construct a facility comparable to a real-world laboratory and recruit research subjects. WoW may be better for nonintrusive statistical methodologies examining social networks and economic systems, because it naturally generates a vast trove of diverse but standardized data about social and economic interactions. Both allow users to create new software modules to extract data. (...) WoW is a very conducive environment for quantitative research because it encourages individuals to write "mod" or "add-on" programs, and scientists can use some existing software as research tools or write their own. These range all the way from very simple sequences of character behaviors constructed using macros built into the WoW user interface to long programs written in the Lua language. For example, one widely used program called Auctioneer analyzes prices on the WoW virtual item auction system, and CensusPlus tallies all the players currently online by several characteristics (...) Other fields of computer and information science that may use virtual worlds as laboratories include human/computer interaction (HCI), where "machinima" videos shot in virtual worlds may be used to develop prototypes of a wide range of systems and new methods of information visualization"

Although I am not a great fan of SL, it's very rare to see a discussion about the merits of certain platform to conduct X and Y type of research (also crossed with the disciplines). I'd be happy to know more about the use of other platforms; for example I've seen psychological studies about immersion using car games. What FPS and RTS can be useful for? What about mini-games? Is tangible interaction a good model for certain phenomena?

The article continues by addressing how different disciplines may find virtual worlds worthwhile to explore as research platforms (for example how political sciences may find the experimental method in small laboratory studies). The advantages the author points out ranges from the easiness to recruit participants, the availability of scripting and graphic tools, the motivation factor.

To some extent, the article has a great literature review of existing work (close to the Terra Nova community!) about this topic but I am a bit less optimistic than the author ("Virtual worlds may help unify some branches of the social sciences and give them greater scientific rigor. "). Anyhow, virtual environments at least emable people to talk about a common object and make comparisons.

Networking knowledge, net IQ and whuffies

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Reading "Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present" by Bob Johansen, I find intriguing the connection between the following excerpt and some stuff I read the other day in "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow. It's mostly about the future of "networking knowledge". First, the excerpt by Johansen:

"Networking knowledge will become important to success, for individuals and for organizations. A cohort of people with traditional networking skills and new media practices is defining a new index of networking intelligence - a networking IQ - that sets them apart from others. Networking IQ is basically the combination of traditional networking skills with the application of new media and technologies. IFTF research has identified the following six factors as being most important to networking IQ: group participation (how you use the network in effective ways to engage with others), referral behavior (how you use networks to link to other resources available through the network), online lifestyle (how the network fits into the context of the rest of your life), personal mobile computing (how you use the network as you move about), locative activity (how you use the network to draw links to specific geographic locations), computer connectivity (your skills in linking to computer-based resources)."

Would the networking IQ also take the Whuffie system described by Cory Doctorow?

"I pinged his Whuffie a few times, and noticed that it was climbing steadily upward as he accumulated more esteem from the people he met. (...) I'd get him to concede that Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn't starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented -- your personal capital with your friends and neighbors -- you more accurately gauged your success. (...) He had a lot of left-handed Whuffie; respect garnered from people who shared very few of my opinions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that his weighted whuffie score, the one that lent extra credence to the rankings of people I respected was also high"

Why do I blog this? I don't really work on that topic but find it intriguing. People interested in that should have a look at bitchun.org, a marketplace for trading and rewarding favors for your friends and like-minded strangers.

Mike Davis about the desire of huge and obsolete machinery

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Just found this great interview of Mike Davis by Mark Dery. It's mostly about this great chapter of "Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster" entitled "Beyond Blade Runner: Urban Control". Excerpts that I found curious to me:

"What we need right now is the rigor of a hard, relentlessly realistic future. William Gibson provides us with the best template of the dark future we're building, by extrapolating what actually exists, whereas Blade Runner is just a gothic romance. There's nothing in it that shows you how L.A. will erode into the 21st century because most of this city---its interior valleys---are flat, anonymous plains of dingbats and bungalows and ranch-style homes retrofitted with increasingly ghastly medium-density stuff. (...) and another thing that has to be fitted into this--- and I'm not sure how it works, exactly---is this whole cult of dead tech, this cargo cult of de-industrialization that at least in contemporary L.A. is enormously in vogue on the West side. By this I mean that people whose daily work has almost nothing to do anymore with the worldly production of goods seem to desire huge gears and obsolete machinery. The flotsam and jetsam of the old industrial age is an ambience everywhere; most of the restaurants and bookstores and micro-breweries on the West side have some kind of decor that has to do with industrialization -a kind of Second Machine Age. It's precisely because we've come to the point of de- industrialization that all of this stuff has become perfumed ruins; it has the same relationship to contemporary consciousness that the medieval landscapes had for the Romantics."

Why do I blog this? I agree with the statement regarding Blade Runner but it's the second part quoted here that I find more deep and with lots of implications. That's the sort of description I like finding in Mike Davis' work, these curious parallel about South California (and above all the post-liberal city). Being fascinated myself by machinery (from the time I saw steel foundries as a kid.

I also liked his point about the aesthetics of computation: "I don't think that the computer chip has produced its own aesthetic, a contemporary version of streamlined Deco. It's hard to find an analog between the revolutionary new technologies and the design of the city itself"... and wonder about its influence on future city shapes.

Mobile self-contained video game system

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A very curious patent from 1985 for a mobile self-contained video game system with instantaneously selectable game (by Robert J. Nikora).

"The system internally stores a plurality of standard video game cartridges simultaneously and provides instantaneous external user selection of any game cartridge without power sequencing of the console electronics or physical extraction/insertion of the cartridges. The system includes a video monitor for viewing either color or monochrome game images, a video game console electronics unit, a cartridge storage and switching apparatus, a plurality of video game cartridges, multiple hand-held game controllers for providing player control inputs to the console electronics, audio separator and amplification circuits, a choice of speaker or earphone audio devices, an externally activated and lockable power switch, an audio device selector to disable conventional speaker use in "quiet" environments. The system is enclosed in a mobile housing which includes a height adjustment mechanism and a power cord take-up apparatus."

Why do I blog this? What I found funny here is the "mobile" feature of the apparatus ("the mobile base unit"). Obviously, mobility was a total different concept at that time. The range of movement in space were not the same (especially when you consider the presence of a power cord).

Habbo Hotel as a boundary object

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(Cross-posted at Terra Nova) There is an insightful interview of Sulka Haro, the lead designer of Habbo Hotel by Brandon Sheffield on Gamasutra. The interview covers a broad range of issues and may be of interest for who-ever is intrigued by "gameless games" or the "social web" or the evolution of the game industry as a whole. It's not all about MMOs but it shows how the topic overlaps with other themes such as social software, multiple on-line identity or scrum development etc.

It starts from the recurring question (at least for people in the game industry") about Habbo is not a game "as games straight out, we probably should be expanding what our definition of game". Haro answered by highlighting the importance of "play" as opposed to "game" in terms of the important metaphor. The discussion goes on and on about this and it reminds me of some people from the video game industry who still overlook Habbo at "some part of the industry". The main reason they give comes both from the technology employed and the game mechanics.

(A screen capture of Habbo Hotel as shown on the Gamasutra website)

What is more interesting is the following:

"BS: It seems like you've added more of what we traditionally consider video game-like game elements to Habbo over time. What was the reasoning behind it?SH: I guess the initial couple of games we did were very small. (...) So these would be like the super minigames, which are really popping out more and more nowadays, but then we've been expanding into doing more complicated stuff, where the user is actually playing what you would identify as a game, like the snowboard game, and you have proper games, like throwing snowballs. I guess, partially, it's good business. There are people who actually want to play, and they pay money for it. But also, at least in my view, if you're looking at, like, a 13-year old guy, who is used to playing games, it's easy to communicate that, "Hey, there's this game-game here as well, and if you start off on playing that, maybe you'll get used to talking to the other users and get excited to meet people and eventually do the other activities as well." It broadens the scope a bit as well. The action in Habbo is really in the rooms themselves, so... (...) BS: I was wondering how it was that you came up with the idea to let users play around with stuff. It hadn't really been done too much on a scale where it was easily accessible like that.

SH: As I said in the keynote, the people who founded Sulake -- the first core group of people -- they all had multimedia-slash-web backgrounds, and [were] not the games people. So we didn't even have this notion of stuff not being done before. It's kind of like really looking at all the websites that were already back then doing a lot of content -- obviously not to the extent where it is now, but really just looking at the past experiences and knowing that people want to do it."

Some elements about the users are also worth to note:

"The market penetration in some of the markets is incredible... I don't know exactly, but almost every single teen in the whole country who is in that age group has actually been there. It's kind of funny -- if you go and look at like eighteen-year-olds, or people who are already past the teenage age, they still have this thing in common, that they actually have been to this service and have played out. It's kind of funny, sometimes, to talk to people who are way beyond it already, but still remember the funky stuff that they did. (...) , the fact that we have the teenagers in there is a big turnoff for the older people."

There are also interesting issues regarding the importance of localization (" The UI is always local. Especially with teenagers"), no plan to go on the console market (" the fundamental thing is really like text-based roleplaying, and with consoles, people don't have keyboards. ") or UI issues.

Overall, it's interesting to notice how this project came out form the blue and is now taking more and more respect in the game industry (although there is still doubt and skepticism). From the academic perspective, it's a bit similar, I haven't really found any research regarding Habbo and it's often studied as part of the Web2.0/user-generated/social software artifacts. Anyhow, we can possibly think about Habbo Hotel as a boundary object, something interpreted differently by different communities. One can see it as a boundary objects both for the industries (web vs games) and the demographics (teenagers vs grownups). And as every boundary objects, it's something worth to explore.

"Data is geology"

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Artifacts of the Presence Era is a project form 2003 by Fernanda Viégas, Ethan Perry and Ethan Howe that proposed to visualize accumulated layers of data in an intriguing way. A camera and a microphone captured the myriad of images and sounds produced during an exhibition in the ICA gallery. The system allowed to visualize them "as a growing, organic landscape that serves as a historical record".

"Like its natural counterpart, this process reveals long-term patterns (the rhythm of night and day, periods of great activity or empty silence), while retaining occasionally serendipitous, but often mundane, samples of the passage of life. The project visualized the accumulating layers of data and allowed visitors to navigate the captured images and ambient sounds, peeking back into the history of the gallery. (...) In trying to convey a sense of historical buildup over time, it made sense to 15 look at natural examples of accretion for inspiration. The geological layers in sedimentary rocks and their function as record keepers provided us with such an example”"

Why do I blog this? I am more interested in the metaphor employed here than in the project itself. As Dan Saffer described it in his thesis, DATA IS GEOLOGY. Moving from through the system engage participants in the "excavation" of the traces left by others in the physical space. Being interested in spatial and activity traces and their role in social navigation, I quite like the metaphor. Some food for thoughts regarding chronotopic visualizations.

From observation to design insights

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Having a glance at this Thoughtless Acts book that was standing on a shelf in my apartment, I ran across the last part about why documenting such practices is relevant. The book is a collection of different snapshots which captures the ordinary actions people unconsciously perform every day, avoiding wet surface on the pavement, putting one's coffee on a radiator, etc. So why is this important? Beyond the "such interactions can inspire design opportunities"

"Highlighting needs and problems worth solving: though: the world doesn't need a unique design solutions for every creative adaptation we see (that's the kind of stuff that ends up advertised in in-flight catalogs!). Rather we shiuld look for patterns of more universal needs. (...) Freeing us from existing paradigms through a focus on action: break through limitations imposed by existing solutions, force to focus on the actions that we are trying to solve through design (...) Revealing what is intuitive, helping us design appropriate cues: helps configure material elements and qualities into intuitively recognizable and understandable forms (affordaces). (...) observation can sharpen our awareness of how people respond to particular arrangements and elements. (...) Tuning us in the cultural patterns and meanings: observations help us become more sensitive to sociocultural habits and the meanings conveyed by particular design attributes. (...) Uncovering emotional experience (...) Harnessing tacit knowledge to inform the design process: by encouraging people to notice and document their habits, workarounds, unspoken rules, and cryptic signaling systems, we can work together to uncover the opportunities for improvements. (...) Inspiring more flexible and enduring solutions: many people nowadays are disenchanted by the obligation to design, produce, or purchase a plethora of short-lived, disposable, single-purpose, or single-use items and are interested in findings solutions that create more enduring values."

Why do I blog this? an interesting description of how designers might turn qualitative appraisal of daily life as "insights".

Analysing the remediation of urban life

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In his paper "Beyond the ‘dazzling light’: from dreams of transcendence to the ‘remediation’ of urban life", Stephen Graham interestingly proposes six starting points in analyzing the remediation of urban life, aimed at new media research:

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  1. Stress continuities with discontinuities: new media maintain many intimate connections with old media, technologies, practices and infrastructures and spaces
  2. The need for a ‘spatial turn’: urban places as dominant hubs of new media activity: new media research needs to engage much more powerfully with the complex intra-urban and inter-urban geographies that so starkly define the production, consumption and use of its subject artefacts, technologies and practices.
  3. Excavating the material bases of new media: needs to excavate the often invisible and hidden material systems that bring the supposedly ‘virtual’ domains and worlds of new media into existence.
  4. Centre on contingency: generalizations about new media and cities, and the invocation of deterministic metaphors such as the ubiquitous ‘impact’, is hazardous to say the least (...) a wide range of relations are likely to exist between new media and urban structures, forms, landscapes, experiences and the cultural particularities of different urban spaces and times.
  5. Banalization and the ‘production of the ordinary’: new media have stopped being ‘new’ in the sense that they have already ‘produced the ordinary’ (...) This process of banalization is nothing new.
  6. Address the growing invisibility of sociotechnical power: be acutely conscious of the growing invisibility of sociotechnical power in contemporary societies.

"

Why do I blog this? my favorite is certainly the 3rd one and I personally think that there is a very interesting vector or research along these lines. Surely something from the near future laboratory.

Spatial evolution in MMOs

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Closely related to my earlier post about the evolution of space in multi-user environments, Richard Bartle commented about a paper he wrote on that topic. The author's starting point is that there is less discussion about virtual worlds ARE than WHY people play them, and he claims that VW are places. He basically describes the evolution from text-based MUDs, to 2 1/2D (with isometric or first-person viewpoints) and 3D MMORPGs.

His paper revolves around the display format of virtual worlds, a characteristic Jake Song did not address in his speech at LIFT Seoul:

"Given, then, that virtual worlds should endeavour to approximate reality for their everyday workings, how can this be implemented? The real is at a distinct advantage over the virtual in that it works entirely in parallel. It can ray-trace every photon in the universe simultaneously, whereas even the best of today’s home computers have a hard time rendering a few shadows in real time. Virtual worlds therefore have to cut corners. As it happens, they have developed three ways to do this, which correspond to the three main display formats: (...) Contiguous Locations: Textual worlds represent space as a set of interlinked nodes. Each node represents an atomic location (commonly called a room), which generally conceptualises the smallest meaningful space into which a player’s character can fit. (...) A map for a textual world therefore consists of a network of rooms connected by a set of arrows that correspond to movement commands (...) the arrows on the map need not be bi-directional (...) nodes need not represent rooms of the same size (...) A location can link to itself (...) Tessellated Locations:r ender the world graphically as an array of tiles. The major advantages over a network of nodes in this respect are the constant scale and the implicit connection between the squares. (...) Using an isometric approach, height could now be shown; this meant that hills and mountains no longer had to be suggested by a change in a square’s background texture (...) introduce a degree of nodality back into the system. (...) Access was gained through particular wsquares flagged as being coincident. As an example, if on the main map you walked onto a square containing a staircase leading upwards, that would teleport you to a submap for the floor “above” where you were; (...) Continuous Locations: a location is instead a mere point in a 3D co-ordinate system (...) In a true 3D world, the representation finally goes from contiguous to continuous. Strictly speaking, however, because computers store information using discrete bits, even their “real numbers” are not actually continuous; nevertheless, the level of granularity is so fine that to players it feels continuous."

Why do I blog this? material for a paper about cross-media studies of location-awareness interface in a MUD, 3D space and pervasive gaming. The elements discussed by Bartle are interesting wrt the literature review about the evolution of space.

Bartle, R. (2007). Making Places. In Borries, Friedrich, Walz, Steffen P., Brinkmann, Ulrich, and Matthias Bottger (eds.), Space Time Play. Games, Architecture, and Urbanism. BirkhÔø?user: Basel / Berlin / Boston.

Bike services in Lyon

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Velo'v is a bicycle rental service run by the city of Lyon, France, in conjunction with the advertising company JCDecaux. Bikes can be borrowed at something like 350 stations such as the following one. Access is via both credit card and a subscription system (card purchased on-line or in some shops. Rentals last from few minutes to 24 hours. The system has now been also introduced in Paris (Veli'b) Velo'v signage

What is intriguing is to look at the flourishing birth of artifacts, services and event generated around this velo'v sytem. Some are developed by JC Decaux, like these ad-billboard augmented with information regarding the stations in the vicinity as well as the number of free bikes they have:

Velo'v signage

People interested in the density of bike station can have a glance at poster/ads in the cities (such as the one shown below) but using this google-map mash-up to locate the nearest bike station.

Density of Velo'v

And of course, the digital domain has also been invested with a "virtual" velov racing game designed last year and beamed on huge screen during a city festival.

Why do I blog this? some concrete examples to me of basic urban computing services; very pragmatic but it's interesting to follow their evolution. I bet JCDecaux have lots of ideas handy up its sleeve and it would be interesting to know more about it. There are lots of curious tracks to investigate, about (for example) the traces of interactions in the city. all the stats they collect can be employed of build applications of interest to the users but also to urban planners (+ to improve the service).

What does velo'v pattern would say about city usage? How to represent city usage through that? I haven't seen visulization so far but that would be great material to conduct interviews with bike users to understand how they "use the city". For example, I'd be interested in knowing how they model their path in the city and if they change their behavior based on certain information (+ how do they access these information'). Lots of stuff to discuss here.

Questioning the unfolding of technology in Ubicomp

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Read "Questioning Ubiquitous Computing" by Araya this morning on the train. Although the paper dates from 1995, it's still highly relevant considering how it gives a critical analysis of the technological proposals of ubicomp. The author aimed at criticizing the "technical thining", i.e. the kind of assumptions, justifications and modes of reasoning that underlies Ubiquitous Computing. It's important to keep in mind though that what the author judges here is rather the description of Ubicomp based on Mark Weiser's papers and less the concrete instantiations that has been designed afterwards. Araya's claim is that ubicomp leads to "displacement, transformation, substitution, or loss of fundamental properties of aspects of the “world” in such a way that its otherness is increasingly eliminated". The world becomes then "a subservient artifact". Some excerpts that I found interesting:

"What is striking about most of these scenarios is the marginal and irrelevant character of the needs referred to in them and of the envisioned enhancements of the activities (e.g., elevators stop at the right floor, rooms greet people by name, secretaries instantly know the location of employees). Although it is tempting to discard this marginality as if it were only an impression produced by the chosen scenarios, we believe that it has a more fundamental character. (...) Even more striking is the stark contrast between the marginality of the enhancements and the complexity of the computing infrastructure required to achieve them. (...) The question then becomes, if not driven by the purpose of satisfying significant human needs how does Ubiquitous Computing justify itself?"

His answer to this question is: technology. Although he acknowledges that human need may have been historically generated sometimes by technologies, Araya points to the fact that the scale and scope of new needs to be satisfied by ubicomp are unprecedented. He then worries about this technological absolutism in which the technological thinking is never called into question ("the primacy of the unfolding of technology over the satisfaction of humans needs, and the self-sufficiency of this unfolding are taken as absolute givens. "). Down the road, this leads to a situation in which technology does not require any justification outside of itself.

Why do I blog this? although a bit left-over (I haven't seen lots of citations) it's refreshing to run across these critiques. Especially, the discussion about the gap between so-called needs and the infrastructures to be put into place to meet them.

One of the example he takes is very close to things I'm interested in, namely the representation of physical space through digital means:

"By disseminating digital surrogates of the world, that is, digital representations of partial aspects of the world which have been subject to more or less intense pre-processing. As the following scenario illustrates, the utility of these surrogates is not confined to office or working situations, but could also have certain uses at home: “Sal looks...at her neighborhood...through...electronic trails that have been kept for her of neighbors coming and going through the early morning... Time markers and electronic tracks on the neighborhood map let Sal feel cozy in her street (...) What does the scenario in which “Sal looks at electronic tracks of neighbors coming and going in the morning” tell us? The “need for social interaction” has been anticipated in the responsive environment and elaborate surrogates of relevant aspects of the world have been prepared. The street, the morning, the neighbors and their encounters have been displaced in time and space and replaced by surrogates, suffering a deep transformation in the process. Entire aspects of the situation have been filtered away and they can no longer surprise us. The electronic surrogates of the street situation live now in a different world, a world in which surrogates of the past can be replayed at any time, replicated, and distributed at will."

Araya, A. A. (1995). Questioning Ubiquitous Computing. In ACM Conference on Computer Science, pages 230–237.

Open positions in Lausanne

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The CRAFT (EPFL, Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne), the lab where I did my PhD research from 2003 to last spring, has open positions for PhD and an engineers:

"- A PhD student for a NSF project on analyzing gaze patterns recorded by eye tracking machines when two people collaborate on-line. Some experience in machine learning is expected. - A PhD students for a NSF project on building and experimenting interactive furniture that embed collaborative scripts. - A PhD student for expanding a tangible tabletop environment designed training logistics apprentices to optimize warehouse processes. - An engineer (mechatronics, electrical engineering) or a person with experience in building prototypes. The main task will be to participate to the construction of interactive systems. In some of our current projects, we design, build and experiment furniture with embedded technology such as LEDs, microphones, small engines and computers. The job will consist in helping in the design of the devices, interacting with the EPFL's workshops for producing parts of the prototypes and working with subcontractors when necessary. Skills in rapid prototyping and computer-assisted design would be a plus."

Anyone interested in this can look for more information here.

Defining glitches

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Reading Glitch aesthetics by Iman Moradi (mulimedia design dissertation - 2004), I was intrigued by the definiton of glitch in that work. The author starts by describing how the dictionary definition of the word “glitch” would be too narrow, especially because it does not consider "the different works and practices prevalent in the production and presentation of glitch artwork".

(Picture is glitch in Second Life found here).

So, the definition can be defined by these excerpts, showing two dimensions:

"The pure glitch is the result of a Malfunction or Error. (...)So in a sense the glitch has always been associated with the definition of a problem. It’s a word used to describe the result of a situation when something has gone wrong. (...) The Pure Glitch is therefore an unpremeditated digital artefact, which may or may not have its own aesthetic merits. (...) Glitch-alikes are a collection of digital artefacts that resemble visual aspects of real glitches found in their original habitat. (...) Pure Glitch ----------- Glitch-alike Accidental ----------- Deliberate Coincidental ----------- Planned Appropriated ----------- Created Found ----------- Designed Real ----------- Artificial"

Why do I blog this? pure curiosity towards failures, malfunction and their possible aesthetic. The part about the techniques to create glitch is insightful as well (replication-repetition, linearity, fragmentation, complexity). The glitchbrowser is a good example for that matter.

Ben Cerveny's talk at PicNic 2007: "Gaming the system"

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Last bit from Pic Nic: my notes form Ben Cerveny's talk: "Gaming the System" Gaming the System

Ben started his talk by claiming his main hypothesis: game can be thought as a way into thinking how to approach not only entertainment but also computer-human interactions as a whole. Acknowledging the breakdown of the "operating system": to him, "architecture" and underlying principles as a mean to organize context in culture has failed. What is interesting to him is what happen in the margin, not in the over-organized areas: this is where 'play' happens.

So what would be a space of play? According to Ben it's a space of fragments and flows in which objects are interconnected, a dynamic environment that is evolving constantly ("we're leaving behind linear constructs"). Another characteristic is the profusion of dimensions ("an aura of multidimensionality that surrounds everything"). Game design can be then seen as a description and tuning of the variables: the building of models to handle the domain of play ("depeche models"). Data visualization is a possible way to model phenomena ("maps for these territories").

And games are meant to explore models. In the process of playing a game, people are not afraid to learn (as opposed to use applications). The mindset of play invokes the optimal experience: play invokes flow and brings you into the flow. Game design defines a vocabulary of moves that are internalized by players and this type of "literacy" is going to allow people to utilize complex applications. Video-game players have internalized how simulation works, as a new scientific approach. They can reclaim this knowledge to other fields: players are able to find patterns for example.

Games are instances of play, a way to understand the boundaries and to learn, they can be seen as a vehicle for understanding. Ben concluded that much of our future lies in literacy about dynamic systems such as the one designed in games: "play is about fluidity, work is about crystallization", "play as the negative space of work that allows work to continue".

To a person in the audience who asked whether this meant the end of traditional knowledge, Ben answered that "it doesn't mean that books are over, it's just that we build a more complex construct that takes into account games in the production of culture".

Why do I blog this? I like the "meta" aspect of Ben's talk. In this case, I found very interesting how he wrapped up all these aspects that makes a lot of sense considering past background in the field. This is the sort of elements I discussed for years with some game designers.

At a less meta level, the implication I see in this is not to think of games are a way to convey and directly put content in players' brain but rather that the cognitive processes mobilized when playing games can create relevant routines that may possibly be transfered to other activities.

Looks like Braille podotactile

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These podotactiles, found on the subway platform in Lyon, France (metro station "Jean Jaurès" direction Charpennes) look quite funny, as if they had been stuck and removed: Missing podotactile

As the color shows, they have been removed over time (one can see the mark of previous podotactiles) but what if this could mean something in Braille ;) One step towards more use of proprioception as a sense to navigate the city (an often overlooked one for sure, not by skateboader though)!

Granularity of maps

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Toying with Facebook apps this week-end, I ran across the "where I've been" application; the one that allows you to store the countries you have visited. Here's a screenshot of the world map:

What's interesting is the level of granularity the map depicts: as one can see, every nations are represented (well almost, islands such as Mauritius are not) but it's funny to not that North America (USA+Canada) have a finer-grained representation given that states and province are showed.

Although I am not surprised by that, especially when you consider the audience of FB (mostly North America) as well as who designed it, this sort of depiction is interesting. It definitely shows a sort of spectrum that goes from a "precise/fine grained" end (NA) to a "imprecise/unknown" end (with countries not represented as well as no differentiation of big countries). A bit culture centric, this map would be very interesting to discuss with people from local culture. Of course, I know it's not the biggest feature in FB (and the same comments can be done on other web apps) but that's curious noting.

I would have have found curious some sort of user-generated map representations. For example, something such as the fool's world map:

Rob Shields on 'the virtual'

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Read "The Virtual" by Rob Shields this week-end. In 230 pages or so, Shields interestingly debunks the notion "virtual" that pervades the discourse about technologies. Although, the book is made of 9 chapters, it's definitely the first three chapters that I found the most interesting. He basically starts by discussing how 'the virtual' became a metaphor that moved from the digital domain to being an organizing idea for companies and government policies, with, as a corollary, unrealistic and exaggerated expectations that technologies will solve social problems. Getting back to earlier instances of 'the virtual' ("If cyberspace is a consensual hallucination in the words of the novelist who coined the term, William Gibson, then cave paintings might well count so"), Shields shows how virtual space has a long history in the form of rituals and in the built form of architectural fantasies such as trompe-l'oeil simulations. Today's definition of the virtual, as well as its interconnection to digital hardware and software can be considered as a new form. Some excerpts of these first chapters that I found important:

"The virtual is often contrasted with the 'real' in commonsensical language by many writers who have not paused to examine the implications of the terms they are using (...) we routinely deploy the word 'virtual' as a place-holder for important forms of reality which are not tangible but are essential and necessary to our survival. (...) the 'virtual' is imagined as a 'space' between participants, a computer-generated common ground which is neither actual in its location or coordinates nor is it merely a conceptual abstraction, for it may be experienced 'as if' lived or given purposes (...) Virtual spaces are indexical, in the sense that they are interstitial moments."

I voluntarily skipped the part about disambiguating the terms 'virtual', 'actual', 'real', leaving that to another post. This is then followed by a description of 'digital virtualities', a summary of the existing systems and their cultural underpinnings (how they are influenced by cyberpunk novels, heterosexual visions of sex, mechanical dinosaurs, euclidean geometry to ease users' adoption

Why do I blog this? the whole book is very insightful but it's certainly these first chapters that I found the most relevant to my research. Being interested in digital space, I tend to avoid employing the term "virtual" because I find it too fuzzy and confusing. Most of the time, 'virtual' is used instead of 'digital' or '3D' and I find it quite limited. Shields' discussion is of considerable important to put things in context about this issue.

The quote that I emphasized in bold above is also very important to me considering how digital space is explicitly referred to as a "common ground" in some research about CSCW (computer-supported collaborative work).