Talkin ISMAR to HASTAC

So if I post about the AR conference in my new academic group's website I get a badge to wear.

I want the badge:


Submitted by Brendan Scully on Sep 24, 2009, 05:07 PM

Dear HASTAC,

I'm rarely in a conversation for long before "Augmented Reality" comes up; it's a bit of a problem:

"Alternate Realities? What are you talking about?"

"Well you take a QR code and use it to orient a digital camera in real space so that you can lay 3D objects and information over the real world."

"Why would you do that?"

"You can create interactive forms of media, change the aesthetics of your surroundings, access useful location-specific data without..."

"You're crazy!"

I have a dream. I dream of being in a room with people who are not only aware of, but made excited by the prospect of emerging AR and MR technologies.

Luckily for me, such a room will exist October 19th-22nd at The International Symposium on Augmented and Mixed Reality.

I cordially invite all HASTAC members to join me as we represent humanistic and academic interests in a forum traditionally dominated by technological and engineering-oriented discourse. Let's bring some thoughtful concern to this truly exciting branch of interactive media.

For the first time this year, ISMAR will feature an "Arts and Humanities" section in their conference:

"The ISMAR 2009 Arts, Media and Humanities Program will present the breadth and depth of the Mixed and Augmented Reality research and application.

The program will include:

- research presentations,
- discussion panels,
- keynote speakers from Arts, Media and Humanities,
- hands-on demonstrations,
- interactive participation,
etc."

As representatives of HASTAC, we will attend these discussions and demonstrations with a passion to contribute and an eye for academic quality.

Most importantly, we can try to ensure that those intimately involved in AR recognize the potential influences reality modification could have on the arts, our society and human thought over time. This isn't just a fad, it's the internet coming to bear on physical reality.

So join me to ask some questions, or email me if you have any questions or interests that you'd like to have represented at the conference.

So I wasn't really sure how to sell it. I have no idea why I'm going, I have no idea what it will be like or where the tech really is in its development. Giving the academics an opportunity to criticize felt like a good tactic for recruitment...but I also believed it.

We need to ask them questions they can't yet answer. There is no "them." Just us. The tech isn't at a point where it can really be shown as dangerous. We have to dream ahead. How things come together... will determine everything. Is discourse and guesswork part of the development of a new, profit-driven technology?

Only if it affects the market.

-Cos

Like A Needle

Coding is a nice way to get to know computers. Writing is a better way to know yourself.

I had to submit a long bio to the HASTAC ("haystack") site, which was the usual discussion of "digital humanities" and "warjammers" and might have sounded impressive if I'd ever really done anything.

(have any of these people? or is the whole thing just an idea-grab?)

So the site is going live soon at http://www.hastac.org/ and they asked me for a "short bio" in addition to my "long bio." So... I gave them this:

Level 21 Digital Humanities Major (Dartmouth)
Level 68 Bear Shaman (Age of Conan)
Level 60 Tauren Warrior (WoW)
Level 35 Fire Blaster (City of Heroes)
Level 79 Ranger (Runescape)

I'm ready to ask hard questions about where the human desire to role-play and the future progress of augmented reality technology will leave thought, society and law.

Any interest in the evolution of gaming into Reality Design or Civic Ludology? Send me a tell at www.twitter.com/bscully.

True, I made up the terms "Reality Design" and "Civic Ludology," but spend enough time playing games and even more time watching the increasing effect of media on public consciousness and you'll begin to realize that governments implement "level design." Guru's strive for "immersion." Every desire-based human system of action can be understood, criticized and improved upon as a game-system.

In short: Political Philosophy and Game Design are close cousins. The former is written to be noticed and heralded if perfect while the latter strives to pass unnoticed by those whom it governs.

HASTAC should be a wonderful step towards educating and connecting the kinds of sociological, anthropological and psychological system designers we will need in the augmented world soon to come.

To be even shorter: let's avoid 1984.

@Copyleft Brendan Scully 2009

Okay so that was a tad rash. Maybe the 1984 comment will lose me some credibility, but I meant it. Big brother was a game designer. Or maybe he was the in-game avatar used by the team of social designers. Maybe using copyleft will make me sound like a tool. I probably misused it and will shortly become subject to lawsuit. Look, I just want credit for my inner demons; I really threw it all out there for these "teachers" to pick at.

To be honest (real talk): I'm fishing for someone who might have a clue as to what I'm talking about. Hopefully they'll find this blog. Hopefully they'll like it. Ideally they'll send a helicopter over to my house, tell me about the global anti-ignorance task force they've been setting up in Amsterdam and ask me to come spend some time telling people what to do.

While playing Champions Online...

Maybe to be an academic you have to be a hypocrite. Spanish professors at Dartmouth love spanish so much they chose... not to live in Spain. I loathe the internet, so that's why I'm here typing...

Anyway let's hope someone at HASTAC can give me a push in a direction. A taskforce can consist of one person, a small task and any sort of action. I'd hate to have to just go into augmented advertising when I graduate... (shh, you know I wouldn't.) God help us all if I go into advertising. I will do well and the world will not.

I meant what I said in that bio though, and through writing (thank you, writing) I realized something new: political philosophy and game design are really the same fight over minds and happiness. Thing is, the philosophers wanted citizens to talk about their issues, their own systems: who should get what, why, how? Game designers would rather you have a good time and ignore the system that gave it to you.

One is driven by scarcity and the other isn't. So I guess we just have to wait for the singularity to do away with scarcity and then we'll just design our own games and.... goodbye world.

We need Real-World Role Playing Games. Where you give people classes and quests that help the world out.

yeah, that'd be cool. Or it'd be bad like a totalitarian nightmare. Depends how we design the thing, depends how we sell it. Plato's Republic was a just game spec:

People made out of gold get to be scholars,

People made out of silver become warriors,

People made out of bronze do the labor,

Plato rules over it all because he knows best (philosopher king status)

The whole thing is a noble lie (an arbitrary rule set built for the purpose of pleasure, a game system)

So which philosopher had the fairest game in mind? The most fun? Maybe different games are more enjoyable for different people. Hmm...

Does there always have to be moderator? (in-game watchdogs who maintain the game system) Does there always have to be a single government, or can different systems exist in the same physical area, with different people taking part in the "roles" they choose?

Augmented reality could give us something like this going on in the same city:

"What game are you playing today, bob?"

"I think I'm gonna go make some horseshoes on my 68 blacksmith in Dragon Land"

"Cool I'm going to go lie on the beach in Commu-topia"

In WoW the mods are human.

In our world, maybe it's G_d. Maybe we err by trying to do H_s job for him. Maybe the only way for our race to become H_m is through trial and error.

Maturity?

So I've been sitting around and doing a lot of drugs.

The newest high is called Champions Online.

Thing is, my tolerance is starting to build up. I enjoy my friend who I play with, I love the fantasy of being a superhero (although who knows what sorts of power complexes that satisfies)

Playing these games, hour after hour... I can see now how the creators lock their players into a chain of goals. One quest leads to another, success never achievable but always within a players grasp.

It's frustrating. On its most basic, bottom level playing these games leaves me frustrated with myself and with the world I have to return to.

I am not really helping anyone through my actions. My dogs remain unwalked. I forgot. I didn't care. It would be one thing if I could actually escape into another world, one that I could taste and feel, and exercise there with my friends.

But these are just poor simulations. My body is stiff from sitting. I can tell that I have not been breathing fully. I am tired and sad to go to work (as a food runner from 5 to midnight).

Thing is: being hollowed out feels good when they make us hold such weights within.

Warjamming / Realityjamming

The documentary we shot during the Warjammers MMORPG addiction experiment has been put up on youtube (thanks anna). Looking back, I REALLY value what we did.

Didn't get much support, didn't succeed in becoming addicted,

...learned a lot about the way things work in academia and the un-force-able nature of play.


I took a good two weeks off from touching a computer. Again, the effect was profound. I slept better, thought better and felt better when I wasn't wired in. Computers accelerate the mind and split it into a thousand places (if you know how to find the information and how to scan it fast enough). Useless garbage...


Yet without a laptop I also do about 5% as much. I am trained to write / research / think with this tablet as a guiding force. Way fast, very extensive.... incredibly limited in ways I am only beginning to realize. So What's the next step?

Learning how to program.

haha. yeah, close the window. Who the hell cares about programming? People turn away from it, laugh at it. They fear it. But that's why I'm going in. "I am a designer" is often just an excuse for not being willing to figure out how things work on a basic level. NO ONE in our society has any idea how their computers are really working.

This whole time spent looking at a Digital Humanity and I never took coding seriously, never thought I could. I was scared away from it by a hostile intro to compsci prof, by the stigma. I spent 2 years studying that fear, looking at what computers were doing to me.

So now I'm getting my hands dirty, seeing what I can do to it. Logic logic logic. It's beautifully different from how I am used to thinking. It seems like every programmer I've met has let go of a certain degree of flexibility (spiritual?). I hope I don't lose touch. But I don't think I have to. Programming is the newest artform, and only a certain kind of person has been willing to engage with it. As the forward in "Foundation ActionScript 3.0" explains:

"Today, we look upon programming as a purely technical pursuit. We talk of a divide between the creative and the technical, and lump programmers in the latter. The programmer is today as the filmmaker was early last century: an artist toiling in relative obscurity, awaiting a code-literate society to appreciate the nuances of her art. Will it take a century to happen? I don't think so."

Design = Creating "There"

[Originally posted on www.tiltfactor.org]

The word "design" comes from the German "da", meaning there, and "sein", which means being. So design is simply the way of "there-being" that all humans have.

We see it more as an activity now, the steps that one can take toward improving or strengthening the human condition.

Game designers go a step further.

We are people who construct situations which remodel the human way of "there-being" around new goal structures. We evoke the human sense of being within fictional, simulated environments. We let people fly, swim and build on scales that reality does not permit.

Yet these experiences fail if they do not remain loyal to the basic human sense of being that each player brings to a designed world. Game designers get to build the "there" so as to evoke being, and the "there" we build can be sculpted in ways that evoke certain aspects of the human mind or influence a subtle shift in the human way of being. 

External circumstances have a direct influence on human conceptions of the self. Thus many basic aspects of humanity (murder, violence, destruction....) become enhanced and rewarded when the goals within a system are mainly combative or competitive. The goal structures that comprise games can be tailored to attract escapism, hallucination, and gamer compulsion for the sake of corporate profit. These experiences can evoke lower aspects of human "being" while repressing higher functions like creativity, community or thoughtfulness. Many games evoke both.

But at Tilt we choose goals that foster education and inspiration. 

Sounds simple but it's pretty hard. It actually might be impossible to build a "there" without it's own bias, it's own tailored agenda that leaves out certain aspects of human "being".

Is it okay to design only for the aspects of human "there-being" with which we agree?

Or does doing so just lead to repression?

Adderall and Hyper-Cognition

Diana emailed out to a short list of students and professors quoting this article.

"But it's not the mind-expanding sixties anymore. Every era, it seems, has its own defining drug. Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for the anxiety of white-collar competition in a floundering economy. And they have a synergistic relationship with our multiplying digital technologies: the more gadgets we own, the more distracted we become, and the more we need help in order to focus."

(I emailed back)

"Unfortunately there's a direct correlation. Computers give us the ability to do too much. The drugs introduce a compelling form of anxiety, a helpful (false?) sense of purpose in the face of infinite possibility (firefox).


It's like coffee and confidence. English papers become as interesting as dinosaurs in 4th grade.


YET they leave people completely dependent. I've heard speeches from graduating seniors warning against use: "I just can't bring myself to work without it anymore."


But i guess I would say the same about my laptop."


-Cos

Bionics, human vulnerability and the media

Take a look at how radical new technologies are being presented to us: digestible, friendly. Like some vegan cooking how-to videos.

Robot penguins.

Robot snakes.

Robot us.

"Oh yeah don't mind us, just re-crafting nature to suit our needs. Please invest!"

My new media-immunities are down: I'm actually worried about the swine flu but I'm cool with simulated animals.

The media has a vicegrip on my emotions with this one. The fear is the real contagion. If it meant not having to worry about getting sick, I'd let the biotechnicians do whatever they please, make robot viruses that keep away the ones we didn't create. On one end they have us too scared to ask questions, on the other, too complacent.

We are overpopulated, and the crash is just going to get worse the further we push it away with technology. Five people were diagnosed on campus with swine flu today. They're being given some magical treatment. People are on edge.

And in response to this fear you get people saying, "yeah well, no one cares about AIDS," or "no one talks about Cholera!" Well, no one cares about technology either. I... can't even say for sure what it is about these links that moves me. There's something. Something we're after. Perfection. Self-simulation. Invulnerability. Scary I-Robot kinds of questions should be asked, but when you dress it up like a penguin... who cares?

I'd buy an air-penguin and let it float around my yard. The snake, maybe not. It's all about how things are presented, and that makes me susceptible to infection.

But now that we've built it, now that society is there to be sustained and the technology is so easy to mess around with, we're going to sprint to the end. Till viruses don't matter. Till mortality, pain, hunger... till every fear has been mastered and streamlined with shiny chrome labels and gadget-laden life preservers. Until that point, the media had better keep our hands and feet inside the tram.

"But why? it's more fun with your hands in the air, it's more scary!"
"Hey kid look its the swine flu!"

you got me.
scared and stupid.

-Cos