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Talk to the avatar
3D richness notwithstanding, Second Life is fundamentally social
too. I can't wait to see what the business world will make of it, or
of systems like it, once the PR novelty wears off. How about this for
a practical application of simulation and role-play: an island where IT
administrators and their clueless users trade places. Or where
programmers and their business sponsors switch roles. That'd be
edutaining. [Full story at InfoWorld]
Those examples were tongue-in-cheek, but the point is deadly
serious. One of the leading authorities on the educational uses of
gaming, JC Herz, has studied the military applications of multiplayer
games. Here's the problem, she says. You have to train someone to
manage tens of thousands of people and things, based on a flurry
of fast-paced but incomplete and often unreliable communication, in a
hostile and rapidly-changing environment. How can someone prepare to
have that cognitive experience? Gaming is the only option.
3D simulation obviously helps you think about the location
and movement of people and things. More subtly, the projection of self
into avatar creates the possibility of simulated social
interaction. I've noted before
that John
Lester's project, Brigadoon,
helps people with Asperger's Syndrome become more fluent in their
performance of social rituals, while practicing in a safe
environment. So much of our interaction nowadays is
disembodied: just voice, or just text. How effectively we'll be able
to be embodied in avatars, and how those embodiments will change our
ways of interacting for better and worse, are questions that we'll
soon begin to answer.
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