This is only slightly related to the discussion on nomadic academics of the past two posts. It is related in the sense that it is about alternative ways of relating to data and data-generation. There has been a decent amount of work on virtual economies and what they can tell us about RL economies. More recently, there has been some breakthrough in AIDS research (hat tip @javiercha) coming out of a tinker-toy type game. What these situations have in common is the combination of computer simulation with human interaction. The simulation is not complete without BOTH elements. This strikes me as an especially powerful way of doing certain types of research, something that goes beyond crowdsourcing, beyond complex systems models (like Conway's Game of Life). This is also different than gamification (which is bullshit, btw), or Jane McGonigal's games to change the world stuff. This is games to study the world.
This is cyborg simulation (half-human, half-computer). The promise, to me, is to combine the things that computers do well (crunching numbers, remembering things, setting limits) and the things that humans do well (some types of pattern recognition, teamwork, "creativity"). Wow. Think about that!
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