summ( )n

Design Union, a web portal of the Russian Design Association, publishes an extensive review, by Yelena Yurchenko, about CreArt’10, an annual forum held earlier in February in Brussels were I was speaking at (the text is in Russian).

I myself took quite a lot of pictures at the event (most of them can be seen at the CreArt set in my Flickr), but obviously none of them is of me; it was therefore a fun to bump into a picture of myself in this article, subtitled “Such & Such and his ideas about turbulent futures”

Initially I got an inner alarm ticking, but then – phew – found that the key points of my story had been captured relatively well; it’s always a surprise for me when somebody *does* understand what I am talking about.

Organizers of the Design Initiatief’s annual Innovation Conference just confirm our participation in the event, in two roles – in the morning, as organizers of the master-class for students, and then in the afternoon as the speakers (and then of course as the participants in the working sessions). This will be already the second event of this kind for the Design Initiatief, this time specially tuned to the innovation in the post-crisis era. The conference is designed as a working one, departing from the usual ‘speakers talk, audience listens to’ format, and will include practical innovation sessions and workshop, with a winner and quite a hefty prize (last time it was 20,000 euro check, not bad).

But there will be the speakers too (apart of our team, that is); DI invited to talk Adjiedj Bakas, a prominent Dutch trend researcher and consultant. There will be also a special content thread through the entire event, about the future of food and eating, co-developed with the Philips Design’s design probes team. All it all, it promises to be a really interesting day.

Digital Skin, our partners and friends from Paris, just announced a launch of their brand new product, 3D World Suite. Initially positioned relatively modestly (3D Virtual Conference Facility), the suite will eventually allow its users not only to held meetings, conferences, or exhibitions, but collaborate and co-create. The company also plans to develop a special product for game-like training and simulations, giving people an opportunity to enact different scenarios and possible developments in this virtual space.

The team kindly shared a few screenshots from the new world, designed with a distinctive futuristic look and feel, somewhat resembling both steampunk and the WoW’s Tempest Keep visual themes (the pics here are linked to larger images showing more details and the textures).

The official launch of the beta is scheduled at the end of March, but the project was already presented to a wider audience, including at the latest BarCamp in Paris; I wasn’t able to come to Paris to attend this event, as I initially planned, but managed to hop to the opening in Second Life:

I understand that the concept was very well received by the audience (normally very critical). What I understood from the conversations with the development team, the suite is designed to be very robust and customizable, and will not require any large computational resources, yet will provide smooth experience for the players visitors. Looking forward to experience it myself, hopefully soon!

To stay tuned with the latest developments of this new product (and other cool ideas of the team), consider joining Digital Skin, their group at Facebook.

Copenhagen School of Business has recently uploaded the slides used by Bruno Latrour, during his lecture there in November 2009 titled “Organizing Uncertainties”. It is a very interesting story, partly rooted in his classical views on the evolution of the Western science, and modern Western political regime and general. But there are a few new twists (at least for me), when he deals with plurality, multiplicity of ‘possible futures’, and how (badly) we mange these ‘uncertainties’. It would be nice to listen to the video record of the lecture (also uploaded to the site), but I can’t see it for some reasons. There are few very interesting observations in the slides, enough to develop a mini-game in post-post-modernity and its (dis)contents.

But there also another interesting piece of information in the slides, about a new project called Mapping Controversies. Run by MIT in collaboration with a few universities and organizations, and endorsed by EU, the project explores the ways how ‘controversies in science in technology’ can be effectively visualized and collaboratively worked out (but not necessarily reduced). I sense here an interesting area of applications for Summ()n’s way of thinking and keen to explore these opportunities further.

March’s issue of Wired published large (and I should add, long-waited) piece on Mafia game, otherwise known as Werewolf – How a parlour game became a tech phenomenon. The rules of the games are simple, deceptively simple even, to the extent that many people believe that such a game couldn’t be invented, and should have ‘always existed’.

Contrary to this widespread belief, the game has an author, Russia (or rather Kazakhstan)-born Dimitry Davidoff who invented it back in the 1980s, when studying psychology in the Moscow State University. The game is often describes as a (bloody) contest between “an informed minority and an uninformed majority“. There are multiple versions of the basic ruleset, and some of them are getting really complex, often including new roles etc. But the core idea is as simple as follows: The group of players is divided into two subgroups (mafia and innocent citizens), with only difference that Mafia people know who is who, and innocent citizens, well, remain innocent. The goal of Mafia is to kill honest citizens (or eat them in Werwolf reincarnation of the game); the goal of the latter is – if not kill, then at least jail the Mafia members.

As with every great game, this simple set of rules results in a incredibly complex group dynamics, with dynamically evolving strategies of revealing and concealing. Davidoff himself argues that “the best possible strategy is honesty – both for citizens and Mafia gangs”, the statement rarely accepted by the players. As with every game, it’s not enough to play it once, the true sense of this game emerges after – and because – multiple rounds, especially if played with same people.

it’s interesting (and a bit sad) the the paper hardly mentions the whole phenomenon of reflexivity, the key psychological skill required for (and developed by) the game. That, and also the skills of grounding (capacity to imagine what people think about what you think about what they think about what you think) are the examples of the key ‘future skills’ we often talk at Summ()n. And the game is therefore an excellent tool to hone them further.

This is a lovely cartoon itself, but it may also work as an excellent illustration to the recently published research paper From what might have been to what must have been: Counterfactual thinking creates meaning, published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The above abstract is very small, and only gives a glimpse of the study, pointing to the causal relationships between ‘counterfactual thinking’ and ‘meaning making’.

Counterfactual thinking is defined here quite broadly, as ‘imagining alternatives to the past’ and is somewhat different from the one offered by Wikipedia at the moment (see Counterfactual thinking) while close to the one suggested in the now classical volume of studies on the matter (The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking).

I don’t have yet a copy of the paper (just requested it from one of the authors) and can only rely on a review by the Science Daily (‘Counterfactual’ Thinkers Are More Motivated and Analytical, Study Suggests). The review have multiple takes on the study, ranging from the links of the ‘counterfactual thinking’ capacity to meaning making, logical and analytical reasoning, and a narrative device.

I was obviously interested in the relationships between the past(s) and the future(s), hinted at in the review: “I find that the more imaginatively experts think about possible pasts, the better calibrated they are in attaching realistic probabilities to possible futures,” writes one of the study authors, Philip Tetlock. I would argue that the capacity to think differently about the past, reinterpret it and seek for (even if) imaginary versions should correlate to a capacity to imagine more diverse possible futures, in other words, to a scenario thinking.

This could even lead to a new game, or an exercise of some sort, that would involve playing with the pasts, as a prerequisite for Summ()n’s playing with the future skillset. If I remember correctly, it was an example by James Gee who told the story about kids playing one of the Civilization games and trying to ‘reengineer’ the history in such a way that native Americans would not lose to the Spanish conquistadors at the end. I would suggest that such a capacity, and a skill will have to better prepare people for ‘future games’. An interesting hypothesis to play with!

CNN has just published a lovely video with a charming Jane McGonigal who brilliantly explains why games are great, and why we all need to start playing more. I can not embed the video here (at least from their site), so you need to view it there. But there is a bonus for doing so, since the story tells not only about Jane but also introduce other ten great thinkers and practitioners who will be talking later at TED2010.

McGonigal also tells, albeit briefly, about another ‘serious game’ she designed for the World Bank Institute. There is no information about the game at their site yet, but as explained by Jane, this will be a 10-week long game in the area of ‘social innovation’. While going through different ‘missions’ and ‘quests’, the players will be also learning and honing their skills as social innovators and entrepreneurs, which could eventually bring them a certificate from the WBI.

But the loveliest part of the story is not in such ‘serious information’ pieces, but rather in the small personal vignettes, such as the night-long fight with the Furniture Boss; it is such an embedding of gaming and playfulness into the daily fabric, in the way of thinking that will change the social dynamics, and not the specially designed ‘environments’ and ‘game spaces’. Sure, it is not possible to develop this gaming literacy without such ‘playgrounds’, but the ultimate goals is an ‘ambient gaming’, as proposed by Ben Schouten, from the Dutch Fontys High School.

“Ambient gaming implies taking the everyday stuff of life and turning it into a game, and yet gaming is not limited to a single device at a single time, but is intertwined with daily activities, like scribbling on a piece of paper while being on a phone”. - Trend Book 2009

I have recently came across an interesting project/game called EnerCities. Supported by EU and co-developed by a consortium of diverse partners (including Dutch game design studio Paladin), this is indeed a ‘serious game’ aimed to help people to imagine and enact possible scenarios of energy use in the cities of tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I was not able to really play it as yet, despite downloading the necessary plug-in (and even the full developer tool), so I have to use the screenshots from their site/facebook page

The idea behind the project, namely, to make a game where people could enact the futures and play with them, interacting with other people, and other scenarios, is excellent, a very ‘summ()n one. I may have some reservations with the somewhat childish, Sim City lookalike of the world, but that I do without playing the game, which is not fair.

I am currently trying to contact the Paladin Studio, to learn more about their work (both this game and other similar projects); with some surprise I’ve found ‘Philips Design’ among their ‘clients’; curiousier and curiousier.

Last Thursday I spoke at the CreArt forum in Brussels, organized by CaravanCultura and their Belgian counterpart SN Consultancies. It was an excellent day (if not not take into account huge traffic jams on the way to and from Brussels ) But logistical hurdles aside, the content of the forum was great, with the speakers ranging from artists to creative NGOs, from eco-consultancies and futurologists to the EC officers. The level of the speakers was high, but the atmosphere was very informal, almost homey, and I managed to have very good conversations with quite a few interesting people during the day.

I liked the talk by Inga Cholmogorova, Dutch artist of Russian origin; I was very impressed by both her own art works and the story she presented, about the concept of ‘social sculpture’, introduced and practiced by Joseph Beuys, German artist and a great (self)transformer.

I liked the talk by Inga Cholmogorova, Dutch artist of Russian origin; I was very impressed by both her own art works and the story she presented, about the concept of ‘social sculpture’, introduced and practiced by Joseph Beuys, German artist and a great (self)transformer.

David Schreib from the European Commission’s Energy Office presented a few key risks related to the future of energy in Europe, and also a few possible scenarios (including the one most desirable, to eventually get rid of the energy-dependency from Russia). I was somewhat surprised that the possibilities of grid-less, autonomous energy solutions are not taken seriously.

I liked the way Christof van Agt, from Clingendael (Netherlands Institute of International Relations) used art piece by Mondrian and Rothko to illustrate the changes in thinking, from simplistic, almost mechanistic patters of earlier days of industrialization to much fuzzier and complex dilemmas we face today.

My own story was apparently received quite well, and ended up with a lively discussion (the fact that I was the last speaker did help too) (I need to place the slides at the SlideShare at some point, and put a link here). Only later I realized that this was the first public presentation of the Summ()n story: before it was always either one to one, or one to a few type of meetings.