This thesis explores applying gaming concepts like "leveling up" to civic engagement. It hypothesizes that civic problems could be reframed as quests requiring heroic efforts. The document outlines researching games like World of Warcraft that incentivize groups to work cooperatively toward goals, and using concepts like hierarchies and heterarchies. It also proposes experimenting with applying game mechanics to participatory budgeting assemblies.
Bridges beat walls | Dome Magazine January 13, 2011Joseph Serwach
We were sitting in a House Committee hearing room. Michigan leaders were explaining state government to several Chinese university presidents when I decided to tap on my iPad and do a quick email/Facebook check. As my browser reached Facebook.com, a wall leapt onto my screen saying the site was "blocked by the House of Representatives'' web portal. I marveled at this message like a tourist seeing the Great Wall of Chine for the first time. More than 500 million people use Facebook the way older generations use telephones and someone decided to build a wall blocking this 21st century giant? Quoting Scotty from Star Trek, I thought ``How quaint'' and quickly tapped on my iPad's Facebook App, which went right around the wall and took me to the outside world. Joseph Serwach January 16, 2011.
[ Persistent Backchannels and Social Graphs ]Brian McNely
Slides for my talk at the 2010 Conference on College Composition and Communication, Louisville, KY. 3.19.10
My presentation explores the surfacing and tracing of the interstitial writing work that holds together sociotechnical communication. This is writing work that makes visible and persistent previously ephemeral phatic and backchannel communication, and that holds our social graphs together.
Social Media Week London Event 2012
http://socialmediaweek.org/event/?event_id=2318
For full information about the talk including links to stats, livestream/YouTube and Storify - please visit http://trust2point0.posterous.com/love-sex-social-media
Bridges beat walls | Dome Magazine January 13, 2011Joseph Serwach
We were sitting in a House Committee hearing room. Michigan leaders were explaining state government to several Chinese university presidents when I decided to tap on my iPad and do a quick email/Facebook check. As my browser reached Facebook.com, a wall leapt onto my screen saying the site was "blocked by the House of Representatives'' web portal. I marveled at this message like a tourist seeing the Great Wall of Chine for the first time. More than 500 million people use Facebook the way older generations use telephones and someone decided to build a wall blocking this 21st century giant? Quoting Scotty from Star Trek, I thought ``How quaint'' and quickly tapped on my iPad's Facebook App, which went right around the wall and took me to the outside world. Joseph Serwach January 16, 2011.
[ Persistent Backchannels and Social Graphs ]Brian McNely
Slides for my talk at the 2010 Conference on College Composition and Communication, Louisville, KY. 3.19.10
My presentation explores the surfacing and tracing of the interstitial writing work that holds together sociotechnical communication. This is writing work that makes visible and persistent previously ephemeral phatic and backchannel communication, and that holds our social graphs together.
Social Media Week London Event 2012
http://socialmediaweek.org/event/?event_id=2318
For full information about the talk including links to stats, livestream/YouTube and Storify - please visit http://trust2point0.posterous.com/love-sex-social-media
2. Intro quote or short video...
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
3. This thesis presents the hypothesis that the aspirational gaming
term, “Leveling Up”, meaning to acquire additional power and
responsibility through the successful completion of extreme quests,
may be applied to reimagining civic engagement.
Leveling up suggests heroic, almost superhuman challenges, as an
appropriate description of the efforts needed to decipher so-called
wicked problems.
Wicked problems are such that they cannot be resolved with a
traditional analytical approach. Existing in a dynamic social
context, with no given solutions, every effort to solve a wicked
problem creates new complexity.
In contrast to current methods to solve such problems, which have
reached a paralysis in institutionalized effectiveness, this thesis
will show the capability of an intrinsically incentivised system
to create civic value from crowdsourced groups dedicated to
improving society as their explicit goal.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
5. Did someone
say wicked?
*need more hq pic
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
6. Explain wicked probs more and
frame how to think about them.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
7. HOW CAN WE BEGIN TO
SOLVE SUCH PROBLEMS?
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
8. I THINK IT WILL LOOK
SOMETHING LIKE THIS
*need more hq pic
SCREENSHOT FROM A WORLD OF WARCRAFT BATTLE
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
9. Expand on WoW and how it
relates to everything.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
11. Colleen Lachowicz, Democratic candidate for
Maine State Senate, and Level 85 Orc.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
12. Expand on leveling/gaining a level.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
13. Expand on relation of leveling
and civic engagement.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
14. What makes a good game?
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012
15. Participatory Budgeting
Assembly Research.
RHETT BRADBURY/////THESIS 1/////PROF. TOM KLINKOWSTEIN/////PRAT GRAD COMMD/////FALL 2012