Comments on: The Great Hunt

By: budka groshomme

budka groshomme — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:02:25 +0000

Thanks for the comment Uri. I tried to bring out the skills aspect here because these same skills have so many applications in the real world. Self-organizing groups are somewhat rare and I wonder if they are only the provence of technologically sophisticated people or are a consequence of the tools available to people when the drives of hunger and shelter are removed.

By: Chrischun Fassbinder

Chrischun Fassbinder — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:13:49 +0000

Yea! A postive article from The Herald. Good one in fact, to the extent that it’s faith renewing in SL to read of such a story.

Sure, right now the environment is such we’re just getting a story about a bunch individuals located in various RL locations working towards a simple goal by moving around an avatar and camera while sharing results. Got to lay the ground work somewhere so we’ve got the human apps and platforms to handle the technological singularity when it arrives. It’s this or we use Windows 2050 it work with super intelligent machines.

By: Urizenus

Urizenus — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:02:34 +0000

I too think this is a very interesting story, and I think scavanger hunts like this are the sorts of micro-games that actually work well in socially rich but technologially challenged platforms like SL. No just that, but they provide little laboratories for us to study how individuals as a group grok out information, correct error etc. Studying this could be extremely fascinating, and in an online platform we finally have the tools to see how the information flow and error correction methods work: all that information is preserved if we agree to preserve it for research purposes.

I agree with Prok that this kind of group info trading doesn’t solve all problems, but then part of what we might be interested in studying could be the question of whatkinds of problem *can* be solved in this way and what kind can’t. Sometimes learning about the limits of a tool can be as interesting as applicatios of the tool itself.

I believe things are done like this with cell phones, no? But online we can archive the information exchanges and search paths more easily. That is key.

By: Prokofy Neva

Prokofy Neva — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:54:57 +0000

Geez, that was stupid, if you don’t like the Herald, you can flip to the next web page.

Budka, I’m thinking about this and wondering about it. For one, I stoppedh olding scavenger hunts because too many people used scanners to go all over the sim and find my objects and scoop them up quickly. I’d try things like put them out on alts — kind of hard to do.

What I think would be more fun than objects would be things like riddles, “I have a weak spot on a powerful landowner’s parcel,” and the answer is: “The Achilles statue on Linden Land in Ambleside” lol

But, you know, I wonder at all these international group skills being honed are for too.

I suspect that the minute you get away from the game itself and ask people what they think could be done about say, the U.S. elections, they might all disagree.

When people need to do something like figure out how to make more potable water available in Northern Uganda, which is a problem of politics and terrain and international aid as much as it is about weather, they don’t say, oh, let’s all get on a 3-d streaming video space with our avatars and Google sketch-up and really run this baby to ground.

Instead, they have to travel to the real place and deal with the realities of that place and the strings that control them in capitals.

I’m waiting to see if SL might eventually become a meeting place to accomplish talks like these. I do wonder. I would hope so, but I can’t be sure, given the difficulties involved.

By: Nacon

Nacon — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:00:53 +0000

uhh… what is the point of this report?

Nothing. Quit wasting my time.