Does Not Equal is a webcomic by Sarah Ennals – check out the pre-Futurismic archives, and the strips that have been published here previously.
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National Public Radio just aired a wonderful conversation between Spore and Sims creator Will Wright and Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, well worth a read or listen. But the chat didn’t go the way Wright thought it would:
I came into the interview with all these questions I wanted to ask him about evolution,” Wright said, “but his first response was, ‘Oh, I thought we were going to talk about games!'”
Wright wasn’t completely surprised. One of Wilson’s goals has been to “unify science with disciplines such as the humanities,” Wright said. “He is one of the few scientists who really has the guts to do that.”
So, asked by Wright about the role of games in education, Wilson said:
“I’ll go to an even more radical position,” Wilson said. “I think games are the future in education. We’re going through a rapid transition now. We’re about to leave print and textbooks behind.”
Wilson imagines students taking visits through the virtual world to different ecosystems. “That could be a rain forest,” he said, “a tundra — or a Jurassic forest.”
Wilson said that for the most part, we are teaching children the wrong way. According to the biologist, “When children went out in Paleolithic times, they went with adults and they learned everything they needed to learn by participating in the process.”
That’s the way the human mind is programmed to learn, Wilson said.
But he believes that today, virtual reality can be a steppingstone to the real world. It can motivate a child to exploration.
Wilson had a very different experience growing up. He explored the real world — and its creatures and plants — from a very young age. He credits his permissive parents and the schools he attended for allowing him to “disappear” into the forest.
“No one knew what I was doing,” he said.
Wilson is now studying the origins of altruistic behavior, taking his cue from Paul Gauguin: “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” An education system that produces that kind of curiosity is the one I want for kids today.
Such ideas aren’t new to most of us, but it’s encouraging to hear them nudge their way towards conventional wisdom.
[Image: Torley]
When I first read about the “Democratic Chess Set” I thought it was going to be some kind of political satire aimed at the U.S. Democratic Party (“It’s just like regular chess, except you throw borrowed money at everything that moves while yelling ‘Stimulus! Stimulus!’. The first player to use up $1 trillion wins!”). But instead (Via Gizmodo):
Democratic Chess is a work in progress, the idea derives from Lewis Carroll´s “Through the looking glass”. The book is based on a game of chess played on a giant chessboard with fields for squares. Most main characters met in the story are represented by a chess piece, with Alice herself being a pawn.
Democratic Chess is Chess game where each figure is made of an IP-WLan-network camera each capable of looking around, listening and talking to the other figures as well as the 2 real person players. With this technology there are many different ways how to play the Game, the next move can be decided in a democratic way among the Figures or they are allowed to discuss with the players and each other the next moves, but at the End the 2 player make the moves.
It’s the brainchild of designer Marco Marcovici, who says the technology is already working and he hopes to have a prototype shortly…but there’s no detail beyond what’s quoted above.
Now, personally, being the committee-adverse type that I am, the thought of what’s essentially chess-by-committee appals me. Still, it’s an interesting concept, combining elements of social networking and telepresence with an ancient game.
What other board–or other–games could it be applied to?
(Image: ArtMarcovici.)
[tags]games,chess,telepresence,social networking[/tags]
While meatspace endures lay-offs and plummeting valuations, it seems that there’s still plenty of life left in the virtual currencies business – an MMO gold-farming site has just been snapped up for US$10 million. [image by fernashes]
Gold-farming is an interesting business phenomenon for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it deals in completely intangible goods. But it’s also out on the edge of legality when you consider the exploitative methods used to accrue the gold and items that are traded, and for most MMOs it’s against the rules to trade in in-world items beyond the game’s confines.
But it’s even more interesting to see the gold-farming market riding high while the real-world markets are tumbling, because it implies the two systems are connected but separate. Perhaps in the near-future people will be able to ride out the rough times by shifting their work into the virtual domains?
If we have any economists in the audience, I’d really welcome your input on this story; the interaction between real and virtual economies is as fascinating as it is baffling to me.
Fantasy roleplaying games are either played out around a snack-strewn table or sat at a high-powered gaming rig, right? Well, not necessarily. LARPing is a fairly old phenomenon, but True Dungeon is an interesting twist on the idea that I’d not heard of before:
“Each year at Gen Con Indy, a massive gaming convention held in Indianapolis, Martin and a cadre of volunteers assemble a life-size dungeon, complete with traps, monsters and treasure. More than 3,000 people — some dressed for the part — take on the role of a fantasy adventurer and travel through the dungeon each year, attempting to avoid traps, defeat monsters and claim treasure.
From the 6,000 hand-carved stones that make up the walls to True Dungeon‘s immersive sound effects, Martin strives to provide the ambiance of a classic fantasy dungeon. Some monsters are portrayed by volunteers in makeup, while others are sculpted creations or animatronic puppets. Martin adds more detail and complexity each year, within the limits of the space available.”
So yeah, my inner geek thinks that would probably be a guilty pleasure it’d quite enjoy as well. But I wonder if there’d be enough interest in it that a permanent installation somewhere would be a viable business proposition? Both fantasy worlds and RPGs are big business these days by comparison to their outsider status of a few decades ago, after all. [image by Danielle Blue]
Imagine what you could do with a couple of empty warehouses… and you wouldn’t have to stick to fantasy settings, you could just as easily whomp up something more science fictional. Hell, why stop at a couple of warehouses – once they’ve been emptied by the urban drift, you could make an entire town into an RPG setting! Oh, wait, hang on…
