insights from the digital future
I posted a nice long interview with James Joyner of Outside the Beltway at LAist. Other videos are going up (as well as more blog posts) on the Knight blog for the Politics and Cyberspace conference that I am covering for them.
Finally, if you’re in LA, drop me a line if you’d like an invite to a little BBQ I’m having this Saturday afternoon to celebrate the end of grad school.
Is it any surprise that all of the primary links on MySpace News — digg style voting on stories by MySpace’s 160 million users — are to Murdoch-owned entities like the Times of London, FoxNews, and the New York Post?
Chicago Tribune goes hyperlocal with TribLocal — will be watching thic closely.
And After chewing for quite a while, Yahoo! finally wrapped upcoming.org users into their Yahoo! ID and migrates the event listings site to upcoming.yahoo.com
cross-posted at the Knight New Media blog
Michael Skoler of America Public Media’s Center for Innovation in Journalism (and director of APM’s Public Insight Network) showed us how Minnesota Public Radio incorporates serious games to further engage listeners and site users.
Skoler exhibited 2006 Select a Candidate, Minnesota Fantasy Legislature (see “commissioner” Bob Collins’ league notes), and The Real Agenda.
So what are “serious games” and how can they function as tools of engagement for news/political Web sites?
Some think these “serious” or “ubiquitous” games will be fundamental to harnessing collective intelligence. A lofty goal, but one that could essentially lead to a more utopian, user-policed and controlled message boards and forums on a Web site or portal.
“The future of collective play: Fostering collaboration, network literacy and massively multiplayer problem-solving through alternate-reality games,” was the title of Institute for the Future researcher Jane McGonigal‘s keynote at a recent Serious Games Summit. McGoningal argues that collaborative, puzzle-like games will become integral to humans’ tendency to imagine and strive for a “best-case scenario future.” Further analysis of McGonigal’s keynote can be found here and here.
A great resource for game ideas, analysis and conception is at the Serious Games network on Ning. Ning, co-created by former Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen, is a portal that enables any casual Web user to create their own social network (see my as-yet-undeveloped, Thelonious Monk-inspired rhythm-a-ning). See also, the CALT encyclopedia.
You may have heard of Cruel 2 B Kind, the latest ubiquitous gaming craze taking over the world. The name of the C2BK game is “benevolent assassination,” an extension of McGonigal’s theory that all Internet users share a desire for “a life more worth living” (read more on this here. Click here to watch the game in action or find out for yourself Saturday in Santa Monica.
Another example of serious games seriously at work was the USC Center on Public Diplomacy‘s Reinventing Public Diplomacy Through Games Competition. This contest attracted submissions from around the world dealing with topics ranging from interactive after-school programs to discussing international water issues to simulating the Israel-Palestine conflict. Even the awards ceremony was simulcast in Second Life. I encourage you to read more about the project and the winners here.
Just posted my interview w/ Amato at LAist. Watch the video.
Still blogging Covering Politics in Cyberspace at the Knight blog w/ additional commentary interspersed on twitter — join in the convo!