“fun”
101 posts under this tag.
The sequel to Stunde Null, Part 1
Moreover, it made no game-theory sense for me to tell the truth. The only good outcome for me was getting scott free and however increasingly remotely, that was only possible if I kept lying. Everything else was pretty much the same bad outcome. So I just played the game as long as I could. Just as they also played intimidating and antagonistic as long as they had to.
So I was happy to discover that the same ability of abstraction that allows me to read or think or program for hours on end allowed me to detach from the whole thing and treat it as a game that I had probably already lost, so why not play it for fun now? And it was, indeed, in a bizarre sense, fun—flow.
Until they got into my computer (and my iPhone). That was the part that still angers and shames me the most. Anger, because my computer is not just a tool, as it is for my father say; it is as intimate and integral a part of me as my neocortex and I felt just as violated as if they could read my thoughts and stare at my naked psyche. Shame, because I should have known better, I should have been more careful. Because I know how to protect and hide a computer (they were barely computer literate themselves, I was almost helping them troubleshoot their crappy system afterwards). I had read Little Brother for crying out loud. I should have known better.
Game: 2 players take turns to say a number between 1 and 9. Numbers may not be repeated. The goal is to be the first to say 3 numbers which add up to 15.
Sounds like fun? Try it with a friend!
Fun it ain’t.
It’s hard to remember the said numbers and “playing” is a chore involving many additions in your head. Maybe it’s fun for the better short-term memory endowed or those who enjoy arithmetic but that ain’t me.
Turns out that game above is none other than the beloved tic-tac-toe. You see:
This is what I love about information design (and what I tried to do in my calendars) this is its art, its magic: it can turn a chore into a game! It recasts our weaknesses —linear, verbal processing— into a form suitable for our talents —gestalt visual processing.
In math words: it finds useful language-graph same-shapes (isomorphisms)!
Grouped under the ARG, Alternate Reality Gaming, label for lack of a better term. I think all 3 exemplify something new, unsettling, and fascinating that I don’t yet have a word for.
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Little BrotherELZR, now available as atoms and bits, has a glorious climax of hundreds of vampires invading San Francisco’s civic center, messing with general paranoia.
> RULES FOR VAMPMOB
> You are part of a clan of daylight vampires. You’ve discovered the secret of surviving the terrible light of the sun. The secret was cannibalism: the blood of another vampire can give you the strength to walk among the living.
> You need to bite as many other vampires as you can in order to stay in the game. If one minute goes by without a bite, you’re out. Once you’re out, turn your shirt around backwards and go referee—watch two or three vamps to see if they’re getting their bites in.
> To bite another vamp, you have to say “Bite!” five times before they do. So you run up to a vamp, make eye-contact, and shout “bite bite bite bite bite!” and if you get it out before she does, you live and she crumbles to dust.
> You and the other vamps you meet at your rendezvous are a team. They are your clan. You derive no nourishment from their blood.
> You can “go invisible” by standing still and folding your arms over your chest. You can’t bite invisible vamps, and they can’t bite you.
> This game is played on the honor system. The point is to have fun and get your vamp on, not to win.
> There is an end-game that will be passed by word of mouth as winners begin to emerge. The game-masters will start a whisper campaign among the players when the time comes. Spread the whisper as quickly as you can and watch for the sign.
> M1k3y
> bite bite bite bite bite!
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Freezing Grand Central, a most elegant improv piece (via Alan).
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That great Free Hugs campaign a while ago:
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Got more samples along these lines? I wanted to quote something from SFZero but I’m still too new to it…
Amazing how compelling a dollop of interactivity an underwear catalog makes. (via reddit)
I figured someone had to have done something like this for hardcore porn. Apparently, the Virtual sex with.. series is just that. (Via NYT) Anyone tried it?
Or how about a 360 interactive a la Apple product showcase? Someone has to have done something like that but my google fu fails me. Anyone knows of something like that?
Where, but the web, would you find someone like Oliver Steele? This ain’t no metaphor. That name was a link. I’m not talking about Oliver Steele the person, I haven’t met him (though I apparently am 1-degree of separation from him; weird, that). I’m not talking about the sweating, walking, pinchable, space-and-time-and-flesh-bound avatar, I’m talking about his online persona. And either I’ve gotten crazy enough or technology has advanced enough that I’m ready to treat Oliver Steele —the link, his blog, words, diagrams, code, and further media— as a person by its own merits.
And, boy, is he an interesting guy:
Blaise Pascal famously commented in a letter that it was long because he didn’t have the time to make it shorter. Another possibility comes to mind, perhaps more appropriate for our era of small pieces loosely joined, of fragmentation of the units of content (think email, IM, posts, tweets, minute-long YouTube videos, individual iTune songs, Wikipedia articles…): he didn’t have the time to split it into many short letters.
To be is to change
for how can something that never changes itself or others be said to exist?
one might as well call it even with nothingness
To change is to die
for something else always results
something always is no more
To die is to birth
for something else always results
something new always is
This strange text above was inspired by Greg Egan, who has in a few months become my favorite author, and who in all his novels I’ve read—Schild’s Ladder, Permutation City, Diaspora—is obsessed by identity in far deeper and more interesting ways than everything I’d found, thought, or imagined before—how to grow up without being replaced by a stranger, asks Tchicaya? how to be immortal without changing to death, asks Peer? how not to unravel without bounding oneself, asks Yatima?
and no one suffers more injuries than sportsmen
and no one bankrupts more than entrepreneurs
and no one hurts more than lovers
and no one cries more than those who seek happiness
no one fails more than those who try
I owe Bill for introducing me to Here comes another bubble, a fantastic parody on bay area culture that most of you will probably have seen by now but that I can’t just not put here because it’s pure genius.
The most interesting part for me was to discover how most every reference was familiar. At a recent Stanford conference on legal futures (ah, I love the bay area!) there was talk of how national newspapers created the national conscience needed for nations to emerge and how something similar may be happening with the web. This video definitely felt like that to me—somehow or other, thousand of miles away in Mexico’s center and having never visited it before, bay area culture became my culture.
I’m reminded of xkcd’s legendary comment: ”I’m waiting for the day when, if you tell someone ‘I’m from the internet’, instead of laughing they just ask ‘oh, what part?’”
Oh, and btw, that glib, charlatanish, bubble milking attitude parodied in the video was one big thing that kept me away from the bay area for a long time. While I have stumbled on it once in a while, it’s easy enough to ignore and often comes not out of guile but out of Sturgeon’s law and just how damn hard it is to predict in advance what will end up being important.
Who of all the wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know before the hour has struck?
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
PicLens is the breathtaking image-viewing browser extension (now compatible with Safari, Firefox, and IE!) that has caused some deserved news furore lately. It frees photos from browser-bound Google Images or Flickr pages in favor of a fly-able, zoom-able 3D wall. It’s like nothing you’ve seen, a masterful technical accomplishment and an eye-opener of the rich, delightful interactions that are just now becoming web possible. Go play with it and gape and gawk! (It works particularly well with Mac two-finger trackpads.) Interesting times for interaction design!
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