Nov 22, 09
A Summer Reading List
Up here in the northern hemisphere, it's the height of summer. And what two more delightful words follow "summer" than "reading list"? As a child, I was one of those pale-skinned bookworms who lost herself (and many summer hours) in serial mysteries and horse stories. In college, I drifted through less than compelling June-through-August jobs on a diverting current of space operas; during graduate school, my intellect took a hot weather vacation from the fate of the Earth with cyberpunk...
Kew Brew, Organic Beer and Drinking Sustainably
We're fans of drinking for a better world here, whether the beverage in question is palm nut beer, organic wine or better-than-fair-trade coffee. Therefore, we can heartily endorse Kew Brew. Kew Brew is made with varieties of hops grown at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Sales of the beer support Kew's international Millennium Seed Bank Project. Since we're big fans of seed banks, of botanical gardens (which are often now on the frontlines of educating the public about issues of biodiversity -...
Dungeons & Deals -- Virtual Worlds as Social-Business Networks
Could an online game displace traditional in-person sports as social hubs for movers-and-shakers? An article this week in C|Net suggests that online multiplayer games like World of Warcraft -- now counting over five million players -- could become the new socialization spot for executives and business leaders, citing a guild (player association) which includes tech heavyweights like Socialtext's Ross Mayfield, ICANN's John Crane, and uberblogger Joi Ito as members. Although the guild was...
Someone Set Us Up the (Video) Bomb
Video Bomb, a product of the Participatory Culture Foundation, is the latest in a series of components that allow us to build a distributed video infrastructure. Video Bomb works by taking submissions of links to online videos (they strongly recommend that you link your own material, but they're happy to link to the myriad "viral" videos floating around on the web), then allowing people to both tag the submission with keywords and "bomb" it -- that is, recommend it to other users -- so that...
Making the Virtual Real
As we move into the fabrication future, we'll see a surprising cross-over between the skills of virtual world designers and the skills of designers of physical objects. We're all familiar by now with the idea of real money being used to buy virtual goods, and even with virtual money being used to buy physical goods. The intersection of online worlds and the real world doesn't stop there, however. It turns out that the increasing detail of 3D objects in virtual environments makes it possible...
Virtual Complementary Currencies
The real world/online game world mash-up continues. The possibility of the government taxing the money you "earn" in online games (through killing dragons or whatnot) became much greater this week, as Second Life Boutique -- an online store that generally sells virtual world goodies for Second Life characters -- began to sell real world objects for Lindens, Second Life's in-game currency. The first item for sale, a video card, runs L$20,000, or about US$80 at the current L$250=US$1...
Game As Critic As Art, Part I
I found on the always precious media teletipos and La Petite Claudine links to GAME as CRITIC as ART 2.0, a workshop to be held on January 12 in Barcelone. The documents written by Laura Baigorri from Barcelona University, as an introduction to the event are definitely worth a look. As they are spanish and i'm a good girl, i've made a summary of her texts for my dear readers. I'm doing this very quickly, so please bear with my usual typos! Whenever Laura Baigorri referred to a game, i didn't...
Moore's Wall
Raph Koster is something of a controversial figure in the world of online games. Having worked on such games as Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies, Koster wrote a book entitled A Theory of Fun for Game Design -- a book which some critics claimed described game concepts that few would actually call fun. But even his critics concede that Koster often has profound insights, and remains one of the most thought-provoking figures in the world of game design. Koster spoke recently to an IBM...
Massive Calculator of Accounting, +5
Could you imagine receiving an itemized tax bill every month along with your subscription to an online role-playing game? That's a far more likely scenario than you might think -- and it's another manifestation of the growing convergence of the "real" and the virtual worlds. Writer Julian Dibbell has long studied the sociology of online interactive behavior, and he (along with many other researchers) is fascinated by the economic aspects of the "massively multiplayer" games. Given that the...
Public Health Games
The University of Illinois-Chicago Center for the Advancement of Distance Education (CADE) is a program at the university's Department of Public Health, attempting to come up with innovative ways to provide healthcare education to providers, first responders and other officials. They use online training, multimedia, websites and the like, but also employ a growing number of simulations and games. Some of these may be found at PublicHealthGames.com. The two simulations at the website now...
Get good news for a change.
worldchanging was founded on the idea that real solutions already exist for building the future we want. it's just a matter of grabbing hold and getting moving.
About Worldchanging
Have an idea or know about a great new tool or solution? We want to know about it!
Suggest a Story
Submission Guidelines
Design:
Matt Chapman
Logo Design:
Egg
Hosting, Development, and Technical Management:
