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MUD, MOOS & Is Our Future Digital World Good for You? June 25, 2006

Posted by sfinkelp in Gaming, Howard Rheingold.
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Quick quiz dos:

What's cooler than an online game where you can play with people all over the world (aka a MUD)?

A game you create. Add your own code to create new rooms, avatar options, and rewards. The code is open and waiting (aka a MOO).

What's cooler than a game that you can create?

A game that I can create. "I" meaning me, Susan, and the majority of the population that can't program out there. I imagine Photoshop and Word colliding with the gaming world. in a WYSIWYG kind of way.
Not that I am a gamer or that I have any desire to become one. (I'd much rather be outside hunting weeds in my garden, scaling rocks, or burning holes in my hikers than chasing down avatars through cyberspace.

But for me, this seems to capture where the digital world is heading. More and more ability for us in the non-geekdom to create our own fun online rather than just consume it. Go beyond the gaming world, and put this technology in my palm, as Howard Rheingold describes, and suddenly the digital world becomes more an extension of me– my voice, my creativity, my humor, my fears, and if I'm a bad-guy, my evil plots.

So for the fashion minded 15 year old girl, why only take in the new fashions on an online zine? She could create her own room with her own style for others to check out.

For the digi-minded teacher, emerging applications allow for lesson plans where kids build their own online projects (see AquaMOOSE and MOOSECrossing).

Ah, but as I write, a little cloud creeps into the periphery of my mind. So what about the evil dooers? Those who want to destroy rather than create? Prey rather than collaborate? Sneak around behind their avatars and teach hate rather than cooperation?

About a year ago, I took my niece and nephew to the Air and Space Museum here in Washington, which has a fantastic Wright brothers exhibit. One of the more interesting aspects of the exhibit was a side bar to the main story. In a tiny alcove, the exhibit curators had gathered samples of literature, movies, and songs that collectively looked back at what people thought about humanity's leap into the world of aviation.

Some marveled at the new technology. It was a testament of the human spirit and would afford a new way to explore the world. Others feared that the unnatural movement of humanity through the air would harm society. In fact, some predicted that flying machines would become agents of war and destruction. One silent movie clip showed fire raining down from flight machines, flattening a helpless city. In hindsight, both positive and negative predictions have come true. Air travel has knit the world closer than perhaps any other technology before its time and has allowed us to explore space among other positive things. At the same time, the wars of the 20th century, 9/11, and global warming are three examples where aircraft have been agents of destruction.
So, as I ponder the strides society is making with regard to the digital world, it strikes me that we are in another phase like the days when the Wright brothers were reaching for the sky. No doubt the wireless, digital world is going to have dramatic impacts on how each of us works, plays, learns, and loves. And there will be positive trends and negative ones as a result. But just as we can't imagine a modern world without air travel, I think we will soon look back on our wired world as the "olden days."

–Suz

Getting to Know Rheingold June 25, 2006

Posted by sfinkelp in Howard Rheingold, Net Neutrality, Social Networks.
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Howard Rheingold's shoes have hand-painted comets and rockets and stars on them. The bright purples, reds, yellows, blues, and greens of his palette suggest his wonder and amazement at the digital world and his enduring fascination with how we shape it and are shaped by it.

I just finished reading the first couple chapters of his book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. In it, he travels the world- Tokyo, Finland, Redmond, Washington– an intrepid traveler interviewing the brightest minds behind the digital world. It's almost as if his physical world travels unfold like a sweeping Internet search. He hops from node to node,criss-crossing continents and oceans, painting his own web mirroring the one he studies.

What are smart mobs? Today, they are text messaging Tokyo teenagers or a Finnish gamer being alerted that an enemy gamer is in the physical area– he can shoot his bot. (I picture a big 70s-ish car tearing through a grimy back alley as our protagonist stares intently at his wireless handheld. Yes! The enemy botfighter he seeks is in range. He signals his driver to stop. The car screeches to a halt. But instead of a real bullet shoot out, he slams his thumb on his send button. A hit! Enemy down. More cyber points. They pull away slowly. Time for a slice of pizza.)

As today's technologies continue to collide and morph into new applications, it won't only be pubescent "thumb tribes" and geeky techies who are meeting, hating, falling in love, and living over their mobile hand-helds. It will be all of us. Rheingold predicts that our wireless handhelds will soon become remote controls for our lives.

Rheingold draws the analogies, Internet is to wireless life what the telegraph was to the telephone. Just as we don't compare the two technologies, he predicts we won't compare the static Internet to the mobile one.

But not so fast. Enter culture, economics, Net Neutrality. The rollout and adoption of wireless life to a certain extent hinges on people's easy access to it, their culture, how much it costs.

Way, way back in the early days of computers, programmers kept code sheets in drawers for each other to borrow and improve (seeds of today's open source model). They figured out ways to network their computers together and send each other messages to compare notes (seeds of the Internet). And they did this in a decentralized environment, with the idea that helping each other out would grow the bank of collective knowledge and technological progress faster. That is untilenterprizing guys like Bill Gates challenged this model, asserting that software was private property and not a public resource. Now it's both.

Rheingold poses the natural next question:

Will the Internet remain a decentralized, self-organized commons as the fixed network infrastructure upgrades to wireless connection technologies? Lawrence Lessig, distinguished professor at Harvard and Stanford law schools, is alarmed at technical and legal movement snow underway that might change the characteristics that enabled the Internet to thrive (page 54).

There's that old saying, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know. After spending an afternoon travelling with Rheingold, the cliche fits. My questions:

It seems to me that if the big wireless networks decided to cooperate, allowing customers to interact regardless of their carrier and even create new and better applications for the network, then people would more quickly experiement and ultimately adopt these technologies. And that would be good for all the providers. I write this, however with a very cursory understanding of the economic issues behind this. Is the fact that US carriers don't operate on one standard like GSM already going to make this impossible– or at least improbable?

As the world goes mobile, what will be the triumphs of our new way of connecting? What will be the scandals? Who will have better lives? Who will be left behind? How will government respond? What laws do we now need for this new, fast approaching world?

While I know I won't get definite answers to all of these unknowns, like Rheingold, I'll keep studying.

–Suz