An interesting post by Henry Jenkins on the affordances of games with respect to their real world problem solving capabilities. While more of a methodological reflection on collective phenomena and their theorizing it’s also (and well-linked) a good point of entry if you are interested in games and their relationships to social software. Even more compelling if you are concerned with blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the real.
Collective Intelligence vs. The Wisdom of Crowds: “The Wisdom of Crowds model focuses on isolated inputs: the Collective Intelligence (t d f) model focuses on the process of knowledge production. The gradual refinement of the Wikipedia would be an example of collective intelligence at work.”
In one of the comments though you can find an important caveat: people might behave differently in games than in the real. I think this is one of the century-old problems with empirical (natural) science. An experiment is an experiment is an experiment – you can only repeat it in specific (lab) settings and generally not in the real – “contaminated” – world . The real might be different as there are multiple influences at work that blur the fixations of an experiment (comp. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Priciple).
The relevant aspect after all is: someday there might be no difference between the virtual or the game and the real. Thus we better think about those games and how they afford sociabilty, decision-making, and culture to name just a few aspects of it.
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[...] randgaenge Games and the Social An interesting post by Henry Jenkins on the affordances of games with respect to their real world problem solving capabilities. While more of a methodological reflection on collective phenomena and their theorizing it’s also (and well-linked) a good point of entry if you are interested in games and their relationships to social software. Even more compelling if you are concerned with blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the real. Collective Intelligence vs. The Wisdom of Crowds: ‘The Wisdom of Crowds model focuses on isolated inputs: the Collective Intelligence (t d f) model focuses on the process of knowledge production. The gradual refinement of the Wikipedia would be an example of collective intelligence at work.’ In one of the comments though you can find an important caveat: people might behave differently in games than in the real. I think” [...]
[...] randgaenge Games and the Social An interesting post by Henry Jenkins on the affordances of games with respect to their real world problem solving capabilities. While more of a methodological reflection on collective phenomena and their theorizing it’s also (and well-linked) a good point of entry if you are interested in games and their relationships to social software. Even more compelling if you are concerned with blurring the boundaries between the virtual and the real. Collective Intelligence vs. The Wisdom of Crowds: ‘The Wisdom of Crowds model focuses on isolated inputs: the Collective Intelligence (t d f) model focuses on the process of knowledge production. The gradual refinement of the Wikipedia would be an example of collective intelligence at work.’ In one of the comments though you can find an important caveat: people might behave differently in games than in the real. I think” [...]