Reportedly, the Danish RKI register for people who cannot pay their bills get a least one request a week from someone who wants to be added to their files (article in Danish).
The applicants do not trust their future selves to resist the temptation of a quick loan.
I find this deep skepticism towards one’s future abilities to control one’s own behavior quite fascinating. In strategic situations with more than one player it is often a smart move to limit one’s own options (as in the oft-mentioned example of visible tearing out one’s steering wheel in a game of “Chicken”). But we also constantly limit the options of our future selves when there’s no-one else involved.
As Daniel Gilbert puts it in his book Stumbling on Happiness we spend much of our time attempting to make sure that our future selves will be happy (and Gilbert’s point is that we are often quite wrong). But we clearly also make an effort to ensure that our future selves at some point will be unhappy (e.g. when we cannot get that loan) so that our even-more-future self will be happy (when we come to our senses). It must be quite complicated being us.
Tag: ITU
Players’ Realm anthology launched
Players’ Realm: Studies on the Culture of Videogames and Gaming which I’ve edited along with Patrick Williams has now been published. There’s info on the book’s own page and it is available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and at other self-respecting book dealers.
I have a chapter in the book entitled Who Governs the Gamers? Political Power in Large Game Worlds which examines how classical debates of political theory relate to game worlds.
I’d like to thank everybody involved for their dedicated and professional attitude towards the project.
Second Life, some thoughts
Recently, I’ve been talking to a good number of journalists about Second Life.
I know about virtual worlds, but I always try to point out that I have no particular SL expertise. I haven’t spent enough time in that world to fully grasp its mechanics and particular features. Anyway, that disclaimer rarely makes it into the articles, which may be fair enough.
The most common question I’m asked is this: Why are all these companies/institutions/libraries establishing themselves in Second Life? To this my reply is always: I don’t know, you should ask them, but if you want my guess a part of the reason is that many are eager to become experienced with a possibly important platform for marketing/interaction, are afraid to miss out on an important development and are attracted by the chance for publicity.
Now, this “answer” puts me in the “critical” camp. And indeed I am critical about the potential of SL (and 3D virtual worlds). But only in relation to widespread claims of their world-transforming effects. 3D virtual worlds have their uses but they are not, IMO, universally fantastic. An example: It makes sense to sell clothes and cars in such places but it makes no particular sense to sell books and CDs in there. Also, it makes immediate sense for an international company to use SL for conferences (if the alternative is developing one’s own expensive and inferior system) but it makes no immediate sense for a public library to establish an unstaffed house in SL offering visitors virtual ice cream.
In terms of revolutionary capabilities, I think that SL is comparable to chat rooms and MUDs of the nineties. For sure, it has potential but a large part of the enthusiasm can only be explained with reference to over-enthusiastic hype. To recycle an old cliché: The challenge is figuring out which part.
More
I’ve been quoted for saying that Second Life is unlikely to last for more than 5-7 years. What I mean, of course, is that while 3D worlds will prevail, Second Life itself is unlikely to. This is nothing but a historical observation, neither MUD1, Active Worlds, LambdaMoo, Ultima Online nor EverQuest are market leaders today. Second Life may last forever (depending to a large degree on specifics of its core design) but all I’m saying is, I’d be surprised.
The implications of this is that Second Life specific investments are unlikely to pay off forever – experience gained on use of virtual worlds, of course, will not be lost if SL loses steam one day.
Game positions offered
The IT University (http://www.itu.dk/), home of the Center for Computer Games Research (http://game.itu.dk), is seeking applicants for two positions as Associate or Assistant Professor of game development. Continue reading Game positions offered
Reverse rhetorics
I’ve become acutely interested in argumentation in preparation for the course on Digital Rhetorics (Danish course website) I’ll be teaching next semester. On that note, I found the following quote quite interesting:
One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. [emphasis added]
… not to say funny.