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Tag Archives: Gamification

Sea Cruises, Finding Nemo & the power of a floating social network

01 Sunday Nov 2015

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Acidification, Farmville, Finding Nemo, Flip Flops, Fossil Fuels, Gamification, Goggles, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Marine Volatility, Overfishing, P&O, Quantum Of The Seas, Royal caribbean Cruises, Seaquity - Traded Equity share of the Ocean, SOCA, social networks, The Global Ocean Commission, Trash Vortex, UN Oceans, Viking, Virgin

Mackerel-Ball

The Cruise industry is projected to launch 21 Million+ passengers on to the Oceans in 2015, delivered by ever-bigger ships with more on-board facilities.

And Royal Caribbean Cruises are leading the trend with the launch of their state-of-the-art 4000+ capacity liner, Quantum Of The Seas.

So no one seems to be struggling to bring the People to the Oceans But is their growth strategy resilient?

Resilience demands that we balance the Opportunity already identified with the Volatility* the category has to manage and absorb over time.

Interestingly the one volatility that seemed to be missing in the conversation is that of the oceans on which cruise companies ply their trade.

And by recent reports, oceanic degradation* is one volatility that offers both the greatest challenge and the freshest opportunity.

Our human wellbeing is inextricably linked to the well-being of the oceans in ways most of us do not realise – why would we? Oceans are ‘out there’ – far beyond our scope of interest – and Ships like Quantum of The Oceans will only go to exacerbate that increasing emotional and rational dislocation.

The bigger the ship; the further away from the sea you’re floating on you become.

But consider for a moment how a simple shift in brand focus:

FROM: Bringing the People to the Ocean

TO: Bringing the Ocean to the People

might offer a fresh source of innovation and differentiation.

Suddenly each ship becomes a floating social network with a bigger purpose – to influence a more sustainable relationship between humanity and the oceans.

Lightness of touch is essential.

There’s nothing quite like a guilty conscience to sour a hard-earned holiday.

Far too many ethical holiday companies forget that the mindset of the average holiday-maker is: ‘I’m going on a holiday, not a crusade’.

So make it fun. Gamify it. Build the oceanic equivalent of Farmville.

And let’s get Google to map the oceans and build a My Drop In The Ocean Pixel Platform while we’re at it – name a pixel of ocean after a loved one.

Who knows: 22 Million Drops could make for a new ocean.

Just a thought.

Deeper notes behind the ‘thought’ below.

* Volatility – a complex interdependent value chain supply chain model manages a number of volatilities – fluctuations & pressures on cost of serving the increasing expectation of experience at decreasing cost – the cost and resource required to managing sustainable fuel sources, innovations, costs and regulation (specifically the low-sulphur emission targets required by 2020) – the increasing pressure of cruise line passenger numbers on destinations infrastructure, environment and socio-cultural dynamics – the impacts of natural disaster and terrorism on general tourism trends and specifically in destination – itineraries shifts.

* The impact of Ocean Acidification, increased acidity caused by run off from ocean side cities and farming and its impact on global warming, sea life and colonies; and the blight of Trash Vortexes – in tandem with over fishing – has bought the condition of the oceans to a point of crisis – so much so that a number of special committees set up to deal directly and specifically with the impacts ad the management of them

The Global Ocean Commission – According to research reviewed by the Commission, this major proportion of the global ocean is under severe and increasing pressure from overfishing, damage to important habitat, climate change and ocean acidification

UN Oceans – In September 2003, the United Nations High-Level Committee on Programmes approved the creation of an Oceans and Coastal Areas Network (subsequently named “UN-Oceans”) to build on SOCA, covering a wide range of issues and composed of the relevant programmes, entities and specialized agencies of the UN system and the secretariats of the relevant international conventions, including the International Seabed Authority and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

ABBA, Anamnesis & social memory in the 21st Century.

14 Friday Mar 2014

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70s & 80s Music, ABBA. Social memory, Anamnesis, Bowie, Christian Theology, Dancing Queen, Dylan, Ga Ga, Gamification, i-pad, Incarnation, IPv6, Madge, mamma mia, memory, multi-generational, peta-flops, Reinvention, social networks, Socrates, Swiss Army Knife, The Day Before You Came. Ibiza, Tour Of Duty

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By my reckoning ABBA and the philosophical Socratic theory of anamnesis will finally meet somewhere along IPv6, just at the crossroads where peta-flops of ’70s and ’80s pop tune mash-ups collide with the PDF of the Ga Ga/Madonna/Bowie Manual of Reinvention.

Given that there’ll be 6 billion online personas (giving the current 2Bn + users a very conservative 3 online personas each to play with) using the crossroads at the same time, its going to get messy out there.

Now ABBA, fine, got that bit – and the Lady meets Madge meets Thin White Duke stylie for reinvention and the death of discarded personas, yup. Got that but Anemwhat?!

Anamnesis. A simple philosophical Socratic theory – and a pretty powerful one. Which is why it was quickly air-lifted into Christian Theology as a fabulous way to frame an infinite eternal re-incarnate soul running through all of humanity over time, with Christian teaching merely being a way of ‘recovering’ pre-existing yet dormant spiritual knowledge within us to accompany the soul we are born with. Nice.

Wikipedia cites the following descriptor: Socrates…   …suggests that the soul is immortal, and repeatedly incarnated; knowledge is actually in the soul from eternity, but each time the soul is incarnated its knowledge is forgotten in the trauma of birth.What one perceives to be learning, then, is actually the recovery of what one has forgotten.

So what on earth have ABBA got to do with it?

I reference ABBA in this piece because, for me,  they represent one of those entities that have transcended standard memory and entered a longer, denser living framework of collective or social memory – one with multiple and complex networks of interrelated life times.

They have also reached far enough into the future from their heyday to touch the hem of the skirt of the Infinite Digital Now and all that it brings. And I have a feeling that, through their burgeoning role in the global fabric of social memory and the furious sharing psst! pass it on culture of the social networks, ABBA are hurtling  towards a state of anamnesis.

OK, in the realm of philosophical profundity ABBA’s Waterloo doesn’t quite set the same bar as perhaps Dylan’s ‘Times They are a Changing‘ but that does not exclude them from becoming something that a classical philosophical text might describe.

How they do this is another question entirely. Maybe they’re just so wrong they’re right. Perhaps the unique fusion of chirpy and deceptively engineered pop music and the flip-flop nature of their lyrical content: from the charming euro-nonsense lyrics of Waterloo to songs like The Day Before You Came, sung with the long shadow of Leonard Cohen and Der blaue Engel hovering over it, seems to have allowed ABBA, like all music of increasingly mythical status to become one of the more powerful threads stitching together the fabric of our social memory.

ABBA, like Mozart, Piaf, Elvis, Bowie and Ga Ga, have come to be both perceived and used as a sort of socio-cultural swiss army knife. They are a lever, a key, a signpost, a mapping point, a cork-screw and an emotional cattle prod in the ever-expanding and lengthening fabric of social memory. Music like ABBA’s fixes points of social memory into a particular context, thus creating a door through which we can access them.

But just a great song doesn’t cut it. That’s just a memory – a time machine to what was. To become part of social memory – the stored, dormant library of evolution strategies that we draw upon when life’s challenges open out, shut down, twist, stutter, or fail around us – the music must be potent enough, rich enough and loaded enough to be capable of regeneration – of itself creating a living, constantly-reincarnating relentlessly-reinventing self to qualify.

Whatever it is, and whether you like it or not, ABBA have done an amazing job of creeping under the skin and into the psyche of multiple moments, moods and generations. ABBA. The moves. The powder-blue eye shadow. The melancholy. The show. The Movie. Meryl Streep!. Madonna!! The spiritual and social halo of ABBA is immense. And the ley-lines of its cultural, social and generational impacts fall across every shape and form of social group and individual typology.

For me, being a divorce child of the 1970s in southern England, living the bleak video musical backdrop of The Winner Takes It All; and with most summers spent partly on the White Island amongst Scandinavians of all hues (long before the football hooligans and pill head fraternity turned up) I can attest to ABBA being a great example of the social big bang theory – from its very particular era specific explosive beginnings to hurtle outwards in an exponentially increasing mass of social knowledge, reincarnated and recovered across many lifetimes.

The second I hear those words. “I don’t want to talk…  …cos’ it makes me feel sad…”  I am hurled into a cement lorry of memory and feeling. That’s already more than just a memory. It is a living recollection that occurs with feeling and context – a trojan horse of social memory: an echo of its first incarnation. On hearing it I am immediately primed to mitigate all manner of degrees of emotional distress

But also, if I am on a dance floor and hear Madonna’s Hung Up, it’s the ABBA sample and the latent recovered feeling carried in the Trojan horse of it that lifts my heart, not Madge’s new self conscious re-fabrication of it. But the complexity of emotion that the music evokes is layered by the moment in which it is now being recreated and in which I am enjoying it. It is reincarnated.

But in the same way, the surprising joy I get when I watch Mamma Mia with my 6 year old daughter is transcendent. In this way it is incarnated again with additional and highly complex additions of light and shade for me.

This to me is a good demonstration of how music moves from being an anthem for a time past to being a source of energy, revitalisation, reassurance and guidance, transforming itself as it evolves into a burgeoning strand of social memory.

It is at this evolutionary level that music moves from being a linear recollection of a bunch of chords and stuff you liked – a piece of sentimental data as someone once chose to describe emotion –  to being a living evolving strand that entrenches itself in cultures communities and tribes across multiple generations, drawn on as a social tool and in doing so, becoming reborn again and again.

My daughter will internalize the Mamma Mia experience, along with my own recollections about ABBA, music, the 1970s and my parents as part of that recollection, and it will create emotional triggers and feelings that will continue to exist, carried within her  – only to be reborn every time she hears the opening chords and voices of Dancing Queen.

The enriching memory and the spiritual and emotional information and knowing carried within it is evolving, becoming more dense and complex, developing a mythology of its own as opposed to simply reflecting that of the people who carry it.

It is in that way that something as trite as “I don’t want to talk…” or the first 4 chords of Dancing Queen, a shard of popular culture from 30 something years ago, begin to transcend normal memory, and become living social memory: a source of emotional intelligence and evolutionary experience that the same tribes cultures descendants can draw on to keep reweaving resilient communities, navigate turbulence and upheaval and ultimately manage change. This is much the same journey as that of pieces of philosophy, spirituality, faith and religion, continuously regenerated retold and proselytised across tribes, regions, cultures and generations to expand to cover the world.

To demonstrate the process in action, and of how the ripples of impact and emotional knowledge grow both more complex, and abstracted the further they get from their original source we might set an experiment:

If we were to play the opening chords of ABBAs Dancing Queen to a massed variant audience – a mixture of 8 years olds, 18 years olds, 30 year olds, 50 year olds and 70 year olds, both in villages and cities in different regions and parts of the world – and then, subsequently record the emotions raised, feelings felt, wisdoms recovered, the light and dark of their deeper emotional reflections; to reveal the texture and richness of social memory being stirred and potentially drawn on – I think we would be staggered at the scale, breadth and depth of social memory: the ‘recovery’ of deep rooted emotional ‘knowledge’.

More importantly, I believe the rarified theory of Anamnesis will help us to explain and navigate some of the more complex philosophical dimensions of social memory as they develop in the new landscape of the hybrid virtual and actual 21st century lives we live.

And we’re going to need all the help we can get in the moral maze of the multi-device ‘me’.

My point is this: in the modern world we are expected to live many more ‘lives’ than our forebears. In our post-modern world we re constantly reborn: professionally, personally, materially. It is seen as part of thriving.

I might also venture that consumerism, locked as it is in a relentless round of reinvention of the self through a continuous stream of new identities purchased – cars clothes homes holidays – is creating a truncated state of anamnesis – an expanding universe of reoccurring rebirth across ever decreasing periods of time.

But that is not where the tension will occur.

The tension will come from the fact that underneath all of this new multiple selves we still carry with us a far more one-dimensional primal, living memory. One bound by a much longer thread of continued existence; that gets passed down socially through nurture and the cultural context we find ourselves in, from generation to generation.

But the concept of generations is being rewritten by the modern world. Generations used to be a simple descriptor to identify the progeny of humanity in such as way as to mark them out by the fact that they exist within the same age frames in the same time frames. To be 16 in 1968 for example sets out a generational viewpoint and compass from which to define and explore many different dimensions of self. Generations were a linear thread that dropped down through history tying the past to the future.

But our new world of tech induced multi-persona living is exploding the concepts of generation sideways, upwards, outwards. There are now multiple generations of individuals, communities cultures and mindsets housed in each generation

Ancestors and descendents and the linear relationship between them and the threads of social memory they carry with them have been shattered into a glittering constellation of existence virtual, real or otherwise.

They do not just stand behind and in front of us any more. Our own multiple myths and histories scatter all about us in varying forms of existence – some live, some dead, some decaying dismissed or forgotten.

In a socially charged world of the multi-persona person: whose face-book profile might accent their personal ‘myth’ or story one way or tell of one very siloed professional individual Linked In one in another: their Sim city or Tour Of Duty persona another again – add in a few Farmville coins, on line shopper profiles and PIN numbers, multiple email tags and a twitter account and you’re up to 7 personas as it is. Each one ‘born’ and nurtured and raised to fulfil its immediate social need in the context of the device or channel it exists within.

So I would venture that social memory as it used to be, framed either by classical concepts like anamnesis or more recent frameworks like nationalism, versus how we have begun to frame and explore the dimensions of social memory in the last 10 years makes for a very different creature.

The next time Dancing Queen comes on – and a herd of 50 something’s, 8 year olds, 23 year olds and the ironic 41’ers charge the wedding dance floor, the old model of social memory is at work in the new world – a linear pass the parcel of collective and compounding memories, feelings, in the context of multiple pieces of data embracing occasion, company, personal fulfillment and development, fluid time and fixed geographies.

The same one that amortises their elder’s wisdoms in a box, repeats parental aphosrisms and behavioural tics. Where the work ethics and behaviours of 3 hundred years ago have been passed from Tofflers First Wave to the Second to the beginning of the third with everyone using the mistakes of the past to try and reset the opportunities of the future in an evolutionary line.

But now, where ABBA, the classic concepts like anamnesis and our 21st century multi-dimensional and multi-existence models of social memory meet, playing out across our twittering Id Ego i – pads, there’s something altogether new and far more complex happening.

Social memory is fracturing at light speed into a hydra of persona channels – the social memory as embraced in the virtual world will evolve in a different manner to its real world cousins. The social memory of gamers will have both gamer specific dimensions as well as real world ones. The time machine of music and the ever referable digital filing systems of the cloud will create a fractured concept of temporal existence.

This is no different to what was before – just multiplied. Young men who went to war developed a parallel social memory to those of the families at home. Exclusive of of but not inextricable to the everyday lives they returned to. One they could reach in and out of as they needed to. The same stands for us. But we tend to be reaching into our parallel social memory not of trenches, gas, camaraderie, distress and man’s inhumanity to man – but that of hot dog and champagne restaurant reviews and download recommendations from last year and an blog archive!

And Philosophy, truncated by the new concepts of existence, the socially networked virtual landscape and the multiple life-strands technology offers us outside the old linear temporally locked life span, is being jugged, butter patted, creamed and squeezed through the piping gun to spell out something new: but what?

Money Money Money? SOS? Take A Chance? Dum Dum Diddle? 0r Bang-A-Boomerang?

DELETE A short film idea about mobile living, the death of memory & why we keep what we keep.

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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A Mobile Life, avatars, emotional fracturing, Gamification, Identity, lifestyle, mobile consumption, multiple identities, psychology, search for self, technology, technology landfills, The Death of Memory, virtual living

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NOTE: STORY/FILM IDEA ORIGINALLY CREATED AS A PIECE OF STORYTELLING DROPPING OUT FROM THE TOPIC OF DISCARDED TECHNOLOGY – By Julian Borra©2012 

ELEVATOR PITCH – In a sentence: Memento on Mobiles – How machines murdered memory & identity. 

DELETE

WE OPEN ON A BLOKE, AN EVERYDAY BLOKE. HE’S IN A BED BUT HE’S DRESSED. HIS CLOTHES ARE A MESS. HE LOOKS LIKE HE SLEPT IN A SKIP AND HERE HE IS, IN AN EXQUISITE LOFT APARTMENT SOMEWHERE. EGYPTIAN LINEN. DUSTBIN SCENT.

He’s foggy, wooly. Unsure and half awake. 

He starts to quietly wail. He looks suddenly wide-awake and terrified. He makes the physical shape of a small creature trapped in a corner of life.

He is wild eyed. Something is wrong something is terribly terrible wrong. He looks around desperately.

There are picture frames. Many picture frames – in all the unusual and haphazard random shapes and styles you get in a home – but every one is empty.

His hands run around his half standing body – a wallet in his back pocket reveals nothing – it is worn – lived in but empty of everything and anything.

He looks down. His bare feet are crusted and smeared with old blood.

He stumbles towards what he believes is a bathroom adjoining the room. He frantically opens all the cupboards. Nothing. No medication, no shampoo, no bin with old cotton buds and tissues – nothing to make this place – human.

He stops. He looks at himself in the mirror. His eyes search his face. He moves his have draws his hand over his chin, scruffs his hair, tears at his face. We start to realise that he has absolutely no idea who he is – who the fuck IS HE?

He opens and closes the mirror cupboard – his face appearing and disappearing – as if trying to jolt his mind into remembering who he is.

We see his feet as he paces across the floor. As he walks he touches furniture; trying to connect – nothing. He walks down some open plan stairs.

He looks in draws – filled with the bric-a-brac of living but nothing – not one thing held a sense… …of someone… …anyone… …any… … identity

The windows reveal nothing. He could be in a truck by a river next to park in a market town underground – anywhere.

His eyes alight on a half open door. He senses more than sees a large space beyond it. He walks towards and then after a beat through the doors. He is in a large loft apartment styled space. The space is empty. Except for one thing. A piece of furniture? He moves towards it. At the far end: a large chest of drawers

He walks towards it as if drawn towards it – by something. No voodoo. Just something

He slows as he reaches it.

Something in it makes him feel apprehensive.

He touches the wrought metal handles. He runs his fingers across the surface. The wood, walnut perhaps, inlaid with mother of pearl. He fingers the handle and then curls his fingers slowly under it, just the tips. He pulls. The drawer slides elegantly out – this is a very, very expensive item.

He looks in. His gaze is met by what seem like dozens of bits of tech. They are mobiles – mobiles of every style and hue and age. There are mobiles in cases and with trinkets, old palms, crackberries, i-phones, motorolas, nokias HTC’s …Jesus.

He picks up one of the more recent models – couple of years old – he flips it. It’s charged. But phones lose charge? Why’s a two-year-old phone charged? He flicks through it.

No signal – no call logs – no message logs – gallery! – gallery?

There’s some files in the gallery. Pictures, random pictures of places; they mean nothing to him…and a woman…he stares. Nothing.

Up here? Down there? Nothing he feels nothing when he looks at her – she is mad and distracted – in the next, she’s reading in a café.

There’s a film file. He hits play. He can see the woman playfully avoiding the film maker. It’s not in this place. It’s a hotel place – somewhere cool and foreign. A hand comes in from the film maker gesticulating to her. She gives the camera the finger. The disembodied hand gestures. She disappears and the film follows her. As we turn the corner she is right in front of us – creepy – staring. She’s not laughing anymore: she smashes her fist at the lens and the film cuts.

A small fizzing feeling slides across his sternum, up his neck and glides across the right side of is face. A small tremor: was it actually a twitch, fires in his left eye.

The random hand in the film wore a large and quite avant-garde ring on the thumb of the right hand.

The hand he is holding the mobile with. His finger traces a faint shallow but very present impression on his thumb, the inner ridge of skin slightly rougher, coarser  – the worn edge of where a ring might once have rubbed and rolled and sat.

Suddenly he frenetically scrabbles through the drawer looking for anything, something to explain who the FUCK HE IS….

He picks up phone after phone: every one. Fully charged. WTF! Now. Where is he NOW.

He grabs what he thinks is the most recent model. He pops the button. Glow, sound signature, mix up. Interface. Gallery. Shit interface. Where’s the gallery. No gallery. Messages? Messages. Picture messages. He scrolls through it. There are hundreds of them. ALl kinds of crap. Girl. A girl. No. He looks closer. Its her. The woman. But she’s younger. So much younger.

He scrolls further. An older couple. Her parents? His parents?

A very sharp pain traverses his skull as a thought crosses his mind. Synchronicity.

He checks the model. He checks the previous model. He knows models. 

The model the old her is on: thats weird. Its older than the model the young her is on.

His face fizzes and buzzes again, louder this time.

Stupid tune. Stupid tune. In his head. Not in his head? Wheres the stupid tune? Tune’s in the drawer. The drawer is ringing.

He starts to tear at the mass of mobiles. Which one’s ringing?

Two stupid tunes? No three. Three tunes.

He steps back. The whole drawer vibrates now.

Every phone starts to ring. Too many stupid tunes.

And one voice.

 

 

Banality, Insanity & The Human Condition. The Life Chamber: a short story (virtually)

16 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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A.I., Dawkins, Digital Convergence, Digital Obesity, Gamification, leading technology, Religion, Virtual Reality

Screen Shot 2013-12-16 at 16.05.28

Dan stood expressionless at the mouth of the walkway.

Ridiculous. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a decision by himself. Perhaps he never had. But then again, fuck it. The Chamber was there. Why not use it.

To be fair, no-one he knew ever made a decision – a big one anyway – without ‘immersion’ – the slightly baptismal name for a quick session in the Chamber.

And using the Chamber was just so damn easy. A quick questionnaire and background was all that was needed. Provide Your Avatar; your DNA PIN, faith (passive or active) social network; your game personas and your economic and geographic bearing and you were ready to roll. (Dan was already a Gold Tier Traveller.)

The Chamber was a pretty cool piece of kit. Its Possibilities software programme offered a number of primary, secondary and tertiary consequences so large they had to write a second programme to help them reduce the time it took to calculate across the consequence matrices of the first. Nice.

Why was it so popular? Well, no brainer really – in more ways than one.

It allowed you, from the Right Here Right Now, to see how life might play out – it projected your future by playing out in a multitude of actions and consequences, with every action rooted in your previous behaviours and tendencies, digitally correlated to your past and both what you may have done and did do with it and in it. The Chamber played those future possibilities out from the next second to a millennia hence- based on the chain of events you would ignite by any decision you acted upon.

And boy did it open your mind.

When you first went in, all was pretty dark – just a low lit walk way to a central glass platform that seemed to hover in the middle of the air. You had no idea of the construction wrapped around you at this point.

Once you were on the platform, your sight-line was directed by a small amber pin-prick light in the distance. Once you’d locked on that – pow – quick iris scan and you were off – and off was the right word.

After the first few tests they had quickly developed a more gentle fade up timeframe. It seemed the sudden appearance of a thousand cosmoses of opportunity and consequence were so shocking to the human guinea pigs experiencing them that one had a heart attack, two soiled themselves and the fourth reached a rather inappropriate state of arousal (psychopath apparently!)

Anyway, when it rise up in front of you, the effect was so exhilarating it was hard not to just hurl yourself off the platform as, surely, life could never be filled with more wonderment than that which was spread out before you now. The Chamber was a sociopath’s dream.

Look up and you could see your potential for exceptional success rising high above and around you, in front and behind of you – a bright dome of possibility; the fully illustrated illuminated text of the best of you – rendered in one seamless trajectory from the day of your conception to the day you expired. (there was a second Chamber for Posthumous Possibilities and Consequence) Equally all you need do was look down around and about your feet and you had set out before you exactly how bad the failure could get.

Looking forwards was OK but you could kinda figure that out by yourself – the picture of what could be if you carried on as you were.

The really, really brilliant thing happened when you looked left and right – and to what degree and angle you did so.

If you looked to your right, the Chamber would reveal to you what Could Be: and by looking to the left all that Should Be. Slightly nuts – and the theory of it did in fact pitch Dan into a dreadful two month period of insomnia riddled with the brain worms of How on Earth…!?.

Part if its massive impact and WOW factor was in the way the visual technology seamlessly played out what were in effect quintillions of cause and effect strands that all overlapped and informed each other but in such a way as you could actually consume what you were looking at in any way that made any sense whatsoever. Cleverly, they synched everything to the iris lock directional software that drew the part you were looking at into perfect focus while allowing the squillions of slightly shaded variations of the same consequence in its immediate proximity fall out of focus.

It was utterly overwhelming the first few times he used it. He just wasn’t wired that way. Dan’s brother was the gamer, not him. To be able to look around and see how actions he was yet to take might play out in so many ways was frankly insane.

The obvious ones in a straight line stretching out in front of you were easy enough. They were almost pedestrian.

It was the Maybe!? and What if? on the left and right, above and in front of you that really blew your mind.

The Could Be hemisphere offered up visualisations or opportunities – potential decisions based on myriad trajectories from where he was in life right now, drawing in his past actions and outcomes; and calculating the consequences they could deliver going forwards (allowing for all the other 15 billion people stuffed on the planet and their own set of infinite possibilities and his colliding at any given point). Genius.

The Should Be hemisphere was, on the other hand a whole different deal. Whether they admitted it or not, it was basically judging you – a moral, ethical and humanistic filter that was more to do with what you deserved as a human being – a value judgement on you and how you lived your life – and the right of entitlement to nice things happening to you those would deliver.

There were still a lot of naysayers out there about the Chamber and its toxic and addictive nature. Whatever. It made total sense to Dan. There was a sublime logic about the Chamber.

What did they think was going to happen when all that data digital mobile virtual stuff finally met in the middle anyways? Brain Implants Avatars Full immersion virtual experiences, future genome and DNA mapping, data petri-dishes…and all that…STUFF – what did they think was going to turn up?

The number of gamer software programmers out there had been left to their own unaudited devices for decades: developing intuitive algorithms that could meter out infinitesimal shades of cause and effect in real time – organic consequences from any number of human actions and reactions, across multiple players and combinations in any circumstance. When they revealed how far they’d got – effectively developing a parallel universe that our Avatars could live in on their own sweet evolving terms, the proverbial and virtual really hit the notional and legal fan. Once the furore had died down (and that took a while) the Senate agreed that all of the programmes and supporting data would be secured by one host – them funnily enough.

And it wasn’t just the brain bit of the gamer stuff. The platform graphics had learned to keep up. Why wouldn’t they? They were smart evolving programmes too. When they synched that lot with the digital mapping of the planet – elevator madness.  The upgrade impact in virtual experience was initially immeasurable. (They had to subsequently upgrade the neuro-science monitors to read the new wave cadences.) Let’s just say that the ability to capture and render every shade of material environment in 4D alone, had become so sophisticated that some of the scientists managing the programme ended up literally not knowing what planet they were on– and has to be sent on a ReLocation Centre to wean them out of the virtual world they lived in back into the real one.

So:

That eventually, some smart arse would think it was a great idea to take all the uber-advanced human plastics generation technology, genome and DNA mapping, intelligence banks, A.I., gamification programmes and consumer data banks as well as every organic and plastic materiality index and put them in one place was no big surprise. That the said smart arse would also think to converge them into one huge intuitive evolving thinking machine with out first having figured out to what use to put it was a When? and Who?, not an If? or a Why? conundrum!

But two things popped up to save the day on the Why anyway.

A) the Vivisection & Animal testing pressure groups won in the Global High Court. So when the geeks said ‘hey let’s create some virtual humans to experiment on!’ it was high fives and whoop de whoops all round, followed by a sudden urgent and surprisingly coincidental need to develop virtual humans with enough random characteristics in them and undefined cause and effect strands to render them plausible as test moneys .

B) Poor Time-poor first worlders had become so concerned about the degradation of their optimal decision making abilities, compromised by the new speed of life and its attendant devices, that they lobbied successfully for an institution to be established in the public good to enable them to stay, well, optimal.

But because everyone was so tense about the whole ethics thing, every platform, strand and data organism designer was compelled to build an ethical monitoring system and a kill switch into their technology and supporting programming to ensure no mutating toxic or belligerent strands were allowed to develop, rise and prevail. A sort of systemic Do Good Do The Right Thing value programme.

Dan had always thought this was kinda funny – that the scientists that had chased the old God out of the old universe had in fact become the architects of a new him/her/it in their new one.

The really scary bit though had come from the really basic data stuff that had slowly been building up in the vaults of the big consumer companies. Their ability to know and capture in malleable data bundles the banalities and nondescript details of the human condition – when a razor was binned, the speed at which someone crossed a given space, the number of times they recharged the batteries for their sex toys, the fallibility of the individual (wrong turns, punctuality, household breakages), their attitude to risk (heathy purchase of Savlon and Junior Sun Screen?) –  had become so sophisticated that the Big Bank (the human data centre) could actually cut the data in such a way as to predict when a certain post-coded 34 year old Latino guy called Miguel was most likely to forget to pick up something his wife ordered dependent on from which direction he approached the mall.

So, anyway, take all that stuff, and fuse it together some killer polyhedrous curved screen innovation and bingo. The Chamber.

The passive fibrillating sensation bought Dan back to the now. Dan flicked his ThumbMic. It was Cheryl.

CHERYL: You sound weird. What’s up? [ PAUSE ] Don’t tell me? Dan you’re not in that place AGAIN? You’re in The Chamber aren’t you?

DAN: Yup.

CHERYL: For chrissakes! Dan. Its just a birthday present. For a 4 year old?! Surely you can figure that out all by yourself. Jeezus!

CLICK. The line went dead.

Dan pondered a moment before walking down the low lit walkway. It hadn’t been going terribly well with Cheryl recently.  But what to do…what to do?!! Dan dropped a quick note on to his palm screen to book anther Chamber session for next week.

Needs Must and all that.

Seaquities – Salt Water Equities & the democratization of our Oceans

13 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Tags

Equities, Futures Trading, Gamification, Oceans, Planet Me, Zynga

Screen Shot 2013-12-13 at 17.06.09In the face of potential Oceanic meltdown, how do we use brands, technology, a sense of ownership and a good old fashioned bit of market trading to make us all ‘at one’ with the sea again?

How do we democratize the expanses of water that surround us? How do we give everyone a vested interest in the wellbeing of the 7 seas?

Simply by giving everyone an invested interest in them perhaps.

Currently the whole deep blue sea is an ocean away from people’s everyday lives. We need to put some salt water in their pocket to remake the bond. Something they sense the value of in real time and their lives.

So what if we created a commoditized and tradable asset of the oceans – purely as a virtual trading currency? And create a share issue around it. Just for fun.

Then we draw people towards them, exploring them, seeking capital gains and dividends from the complexity and the stratifications inherent in our oceans .

If we have a digital 3 dimensional map of the oceans that we can pixelate, we can plot them, and draw people into their world with the offer of ownership, even if it is only virtual. (We do it with teddy bears and stars for God’s sake, so why not oceans?) Why not create billions of pixel kilometers of ocean that then get virtually traded? An oceanic version of equities.

Lets call them Seaquities.

Let’s create a global virtual trade in Seaquities. And as with global Equities, the big fish take the big block buys and distribute as they see fit to their stakeholders – right down to the everyday people buying the odd one here and there

These would create a central fund of immutable mutuality around our oceans with multiple dimensions where everyone can play. Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts could purchase small swathes of water for their little sailors to virtually sail and trade.

Communities and Corporations with a vested interest in the sea, either on which they ply or base their trade or from which they seek their livelihood could buy up blocks as a legacy statement of intent.

And we could grade them – with the deepest ocean Seaquity pixels being the most valuable (rich as they are with any marine life left that we haven’t killed off yet, as well as the underwater mineral riches embedded in the underwater mountain ranges) – and with those from the shallowest waters being offered to the fashion industry (only joking).

Brands could then use their global voice, constituency and distribution channels (on pack on shelf on mobile on line) to spread the word. And technology can build the trading platform where everyone plays.

Gamification would be critical to the success of this. Bringing play into this most serious of issues in such a way as to appeal to the Planet Me sense of personal rewards and relevance as opposed to the Planet We ‘cupped hands stroking polar bears’ version is vital for it to fly.

If Zynga can create a sense of market force around Farmville and virtual coins: and bit coin can trade things of immeasurable value simply using virtual algorithms then surely Oceanville and the market trading of shares in it cannot be beyond the wit and the intellect of us all?

And the educational aspect that the exploration of ones own portfolio of Seaquities would bring could be mindblowing.

Who knows; if we could get a few Vampire Squid traders go long on ocean Seaquities while they short everything else, now that could be transformative.

That really would be a new form of Trading Futures!

Part 2 of Big Fish, Little Pond & the art of oceanic happiness. 

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