Gamification for drinking water. Hypothetical app:
1.Goal: Drinking a gallon of water a day 2. Realistic chunks: Drink four 32oz Nalgene bottles every 3-4 hours. 3. Levels: Each level is 32 oz of water. The timer starts and you must finish before it ends. Each level gets the timer get shorter. 4. Reward: You get a specific salty snack after each bottle finished. 5. What could make it fun? See how fast you can chug it. Challenge a friend. 6. Interface: Stars out with empty full jug on screen. You tap and screen yells “GO!” and displays timer in minutes. When timer is up you need to have at least drank at 32 oz benchmark and the displayed jug should look a quarter emptier.
7.
Challenge Finish a whole gallon of water in one day.
Choice Drink it all at once or space it out throughout the day
Change
Carry one 32 oz bottle to refill four times or
carry 2 32oz bottles to refill twice or
carry one whole gallon jug of water to sip throughout the day.
Chance If you don’t hit the 32 oz benchmark in time you lose out on the specific snack for that tier.
Simulation is the main technique that appeals to me. This is because as a 3D artist I use a computer to create virtual renditions of the real life objects. We can simulate artificial worlds using 3D software and game engines. Within these softwares there are even simulation tools that can mimic the qualities and movement of water, fire, wind, earthquakes, bullet ricochets, gravity physics, etc. (whatever you can think of).
So, this technique of simulation is already largely used as an art form. Computer games are art. 3D re-enactments of a meteor hitting the earth on the History Channel is art. Trees blowing in the wind inside a virtual reality space is art.
These simulations are helping with everyday tasks and careers. Doctors are doing virtual simulations of surgeries. Construction workers are doing virtual training of equipment. The military is even training for combat using simulations.
My goal is to get so good at mimicking real life situations in the virtual world that they become indistinguishable from the real thing. Technology will keeping getting better in game engines like Unity and Unreal, as well as special effects softwares like Houdini, and 3D softwares like Blender, Maya, Cinema4D, etc.
A game that left a significant mark on me is “Death Stranding”. It only came out a couple years ago, but I think it’s one of the most unique and beautiful games ever made.
First of all it features an incredibly trippy sci-fi plot that goes something like this (without spoilers):
The Death Stranding was a cataclysmic event in which ghostly “Beached Things” suddenly appeared in the world of the living, triggering a massive amount of simultaneous explosion-like “voidouts” all over the world that eradicated everything caught up in them, leaving nothing but craters in their wake. As a result of the Death Stranding, previously undiscovered particles known as chiralium appeared in our world, rain turned into “timefall” that rapidly ages whatever it touches, and those BTs wander the world in rainy areas, pulled magnetically towards life if disturbed. Ruffle enough of their feathers and eventually their attack on the living causes more voidouts, too. Naturally, this leaves the remnants of humanity turtled up inside isolated cities, thus creating the need for transporters: those brave enough to make the journey to deliver essentials from one city to another. Porters are some of the most valuable people in this death stranded world.
So, you basically play as postman in an apocalyptic wasteland avoiding bandits and weird Lovecraftian creatures (which a fetus you carry in a tank helps you detect, by the way). It stars incredible actors like Mads Mikkelsen, Norman Reedus, Margaret Qualley, and even Guillermo Del Toro, and regularly has crazy 4th-wall breaking moments. The game just oozes with charm.
Let’s break this game down in terms of Darran Jamieson’s four elements or layers of a game:
Challenge: Deliver goods from point A to point B while avoiding things that will kill you and/or rob you. Also, you must keep balance on rough terrain so that you don’t fall and lose or destroy your cargo.
Choice: You can add materials to stations to build roads to help you transport goods faster at later times. You can choose to mash buttons quickly to run faster, but this will make balancing a lot harder. You can do delivery side-missions or just stick completely to main quests to progress the story. You can choose how to stack cargo on your body to distribute weight easily.
Change: You can upgrade components. You can craft mechanical legs that give you more balance, speed, strength. You can progress through different environments. You can make different types of weapons to deal with different types of enemies.
Chance: You have to get from A to B but there is always a chance it could start raining at some point on your route. The presence of rain means that the ghostly things could appear. There is also a chance that you will stumble across a bandit sensor beacon that will ping your location, alerting them to your presence. There might be an avalanche or rock slide that occurs as you are trying to traverse a mountain pass. Players from other games might have left you a rope or a ladder (connected through internet access) to make it across a rough patch of terrain.
The most significant product of digital media are the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube etc. They have a huge impact on individuals, communities, and governments. They spread so fast because they seem free, and they satisfy our natural need for connection.
We are inherently social. Aristotle said “humans are social animals.” Naturally we desire connection with groups and individuals, and that is why the social media platforms are blooming everywhere. According to Digital Technology & Culture, an Open Education Resource book, the total number of active social media users worldwide is around 3.499 billio, which is almost half of the earth’s citizens. I am sure that number would be way higher if people from underdeveloped countries had better economic and political circumstances. As Rushkoff explained in his book Program or Be Programmed
In spite of its many dehumanizing tendencies, digital media is still biased toward the social. In the ongoing coevolution between people and technologies, tools that connect us thrive-and tools that don’t connect us soon learn to. We must remember that the bias of digital media is toward contact with other people, not with their content or, worse, their cash. If we don’t, we risk robbing ourselves of the main gift digital technology has to offer us in return of our having created it.
On the individual level social media has many positive sides. Through social media we can directly contact people. It also allows us to share info and thoughts without the need of the traditional gatekeepers like newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV shows. It used to be so hard to get your voice heard in public before social media. It gives regular people enough space to discuss ideas, protest against oppression, and promote and sell products or services with minimal restrictions. Online social networking is a digital phenomenon that is shaping the future.
When using social media, and individual’s identity could be a liability in many cases, so we tend to engage anonymously to avoid the consequences of what we express. As Rushkoff said, “the more anonymously we engage with others, the less we experience the human repercussions of what we say and do”. We should be ourselves, and not anonymous, unless it is necessary.
Being anonymous is a good strategy to face dictatorship or any oppressed authority, but it is not good enough. At some point, real people must stand up for their rights and show their real identity, and that will make a real impact on the ground. Real people become role models to lead the change. I remember 10 years ago when the Arab Spring started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Libya, and Syria, and how social media played the main role in exposing the regime’s illegal activities. Anonymous activists started posting videos on social media of the violence the security services committed against citizens. Also, anonymous groups used social media platforms to organize protesting and social events. All that organizing and exposing the oppressor by videos and live streaming was very important and courageous, but the real change started happing when people defeated their fear, and started standing up openly for what they believed in. Being themselves gave them political power; it encouraged many other people to join the peaceful protesting, and that lead to huge changes in these countries. Because of the protesting, the Egyptian dictator resigned and a free election happened for the first time in modern Egyptian history. Tunisia became the first real democracy in the Middle East. However, Syria unfortunately is still going through a civil war. The Syrians are very active online, and they have an ongoing free and open dialogue on all the sensitive topics, and that is a healthy sign and could be the basis for peace in the future.
I truly believe social media will benefit underdeveloped countries, especially in the Middle East, in the same way inventing the printing press benefitted the Europeans. Inventing the printing press gave birth to the Enlightenment era in Europe where scientists, philosophers, and free thinkers got a chance to spread knowledge to get Europe out of the Dark Ages.
Since social media arrived in the Middle East, Middle Eastern people start hearing ideas that used to be considered taboo, and whoever expressed them might put their lives on the line. Nowadays, criticizing the government system, religious beliefs, traditions, and values has become more normal. Social media gave critical thinking and the scientific method a louder voice in the Middle East, but nothing is given for free, and social media is not an exception even if it feels like it!
Social media platforms make money from the participation of the users. The more engagement that happens on a platform, the more advertising the companies can generate, and the more money they make. John Green in his YouTube video “Social Media: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #10,” explains targeted advertising as “the advertising designed specifically for group of people who has similar interests, location, age, gender etc.”
Social media platforms use this demographic information to target individuals with advertisements, and they have a lot of information. That’s why, after Googling Toyota for my accounting class research, I start seeing Toyota commercials on the feeds of my social media accounts!
In the exchange for the service they provide; social media platforms collect information about the users from every move they do online; like what kind of videos they see and how they see it; whether they finish or not, what posts they like, what topics they comment on, what they share, what products they buy, what locations they go to, what communities they socialize with, who their friends are, and their friends of friends. It is creepy! And it raises concerns about trust, privacy, and safety.
Social media platforms are not all evil, they use some restrictions on the user’s identity to protect them from fake news and spamming. As explained in Digital Technology & Culture an Open Education Resource:
A user can block, unfriend or unfollow those they find offensive. Excessive nudity, violence, obscenity and abusive behavior can be reported. But information shared can be true or wildly untrue without a problem. If these sites were to dictate what content is appropriate and what is not, the restrictions would devalue the network as a free and open space.
At the end of the day we choose to log in and engage online.
We also understand that whatever is shared online has offline consequences, Douglas Rushkoff in his book Program or be Programmed suggested Ten Commandments for the Digital Age, and they apply to social media:
1- “Don’t be always on”. Most of our life should be spent offline. We live in real time, but digital technology does not; it is timeless and always out there ready for us to engage with it.
2- “Live in person” be aware of the place you live in. The real people around you. Do not get dislocated and lose your sense of place.
3- “You may always choose none of the above”. In Digital technology everything must be yes or no, and that forces choices on us. We have to remember that we have a third options.
Businessman walks to the end of the road
4- “You are never completely right. Digital media polarizes us into opposing camps, incapable of recognizing shared values or dealing with paradox.” It oversimplifies ideas and things. The seekers of knowledge just get it with a simple research in any online search engine, skipping the learning that takes place through the traditional process of research and step by step progress to obtain information.
5- “One size does not fit all” Be aware that digital media brings everything to the same level and that puts people, ideas, and businesses at a disadvantage. For example, small businesses online are competing with chain stores, and that lowers their chance of success.
6- “Be yourself” anonymity is safer, but the more we engage through it, the less we experience the repercussions of our actions.
7- “Do not sell your friends. We must remember that the bias of digital media is toward contact with other people, not with their content or, worse, their cash.”
8- “Tell the Truth.” The more valuable, truthful, and real our messages, the more they will spread and the better we will do. We must learn to tell the truth.
9- “Share, don’t steal” openness gets abused online. By understanding the difference between sharing and stealing, we can maintain the openness of digital media.
10- “Program or be programmed” In the Digital Age we must learn how to create software and write codes, otherwise we might become the controlled by the software without noticing. Understanding programming will help with better online behavior.
Connecting for humans is essential, and people now are freer to share and access information than in any time in history. But it is not free. We exchange our personal information for the connection. Connecting online comes with risks like cyberbullying, catfishing, massive scams, disinformation campaigns, fake news, spamming, trolling, hate speech, defamation, and the Big Brother out there watching. Regardless of all that we continue to share, trade, and connect because we are human. It is critical that we stay personally involved and responsible when engaging on social media.
Notes
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY & CULTURE An Open Education Resource
Social Media: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #10
Can people learn empathy through the use of virtual reality? Recall a time when you were reading a novel or watching a powerful scene in a movie which moved you to tears. This scene might have made you reflect on your own life and your relation to others within it, causing you to be overwhelmed with emotions in that brief moment. Imagine this effect amplified to a more prolonged and intimate level. We all know the phrase “walk a mile in someone’s shoes”, but current trends in VR are making it more of a literal possibility. Empathy is key in fostering social connections with others. It allows a much higher degree of interpersonal understanding than does simple communication. Hearing sad stories might give us pause for a moment, but it’s easy to quickly return focus to our own lives. However, to truly relate to those stories on a personal level and actually feel what someone is feeling is a powerful force for social progress. After all, humans are a sum of our experiences, therefore to experience something is more impactful than to simply imagine it.
New VR experiences and studies are occurring which show promise in helping people understand experiences of the homeless, victims of war, elders with dementia, prison life and more. Immersive technologies could be becoming more popular in the field of journalism. What better way to convey the news than placing people in the center of the world’s most pressing issues? Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan told us “the medium is the message”. Virtual reality is becoming the new medium to deliver the message, and is a message in itself that points to the human desire to understand things in an ever-increasing depth. It has potential to reshape journalism in a way that allows society to interact with news and information in exciting ways. Tapping into multiple senses and throwing the viewer into the story can give the news an unprecedented feeling of realness, and this has the power to dramatically alter the relationship between audience and content.
In our current political climate there exists so much vitriol over the many immigrants and refugees coming to the United States. Many Americans are calling for closed borders, often painting refugees in a very negative light. Project Syria, a 2014 journalism study from Nonny de La Peña, is a VR experience that places you in the shoes of a Syrian child in the middle of a war-torn landscape. It is a two-part experience. The first part takes place in a busy street of Aleppo. In the middle of singing a rocket explodes near you filling your view with dust and debris.You are dazed, shellshocked, and hear high pitch ringing in your ears. The people around you are running, screaming, crying, and lying on the ground dead. The second part places you in the middle of a refuge camp as the number of refugees around you grows exponentially.
You can experience solitary confinement with The Guardian’s 6 x 9. This is a 360 VR video that has you sitting a 6 foot by 9 foot sterile room as prison stats are presented to you as screams and bangs echo down the corridors. Various narrators give some reasons why people are sent into solitary confinement, and sometimes these reasons are as trivial as looking at a guard the wrong way or taking extra toilet paper. A prisoner could be serving a year-sentence initially, but end up serving years more existing in this bleak state of despair called solitary. At one point you begin experiencing symptoms of psychosis: floating in the air, seeing cracks running down the walls, blurred vision, auditory hallucinations all around you, etc.
Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab released Becoming Homeless: A Human Experience. The experiment posits that there is a misconception that becoming homeless is due to your personal choices and seeks to counter that argument. In this experience you are assuming the role of someone who can no longer afford their home. You sell objects in your home to offset owed rent and you watch as your belongings begin to dwindle. The goal of this type of experience is to help to break down the barrier of the “us versus them” mentality. Results of this study revealed that participants were more likely to agree with statements that empathized with the plight of the homeless, and these attitudes were shown to continue on afterwards. As part of the study, participants of the VR group and others from a condition group (who only read a narrative) were asked to sign a petition supporting affordable housing. 82% of the VR participants signed versus 67% of those that only read a narrative. In the second study, 85% of the VR participants signed, whereas only 63% of the narrative participants did.
Although, there are blunders in the mission to elect VR as the ultimate tool for generating empathy as shown during a livestream by Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and head of social virtual reality, Rachel Franklin. Their intent was to demonstrate the empathetic qualities of VR as they toured a post-hurricane, flooded Puerto Rico. However, it came off as tone-deaf and self-promoting. The two smiled and high-fived in front of flooded homes and people in turmoil. Their positive attitudes superimposed on a backdrop of a devastated community was truly in bad taste. Worst of all, their attempt to display empathy through promotional use made the concept look tacky. What it looked like was cheap disaster tourism. They did not seem to empathize with anything going on around them in the virtual space. You could tell their head space was still locked back into the comfort of their real-life homes, which is about the farthest thing away from the horrendous conditions being displayed on screen. They even seemingly become bored at one point and teleport back to their luxurious offices. The charade cheapened the whole promise of the experience.
This is the issue with VR being completely immersive as to create pure empathy. In Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving-Image Media and the Spectator, Lev Manovich remarks, “regardless of what visual forms can be presented before the eye (diagrams, photographs, film images), they are subjected to complicated processing by the nervous system, which constructs its own internal representations”. It’s all about our personal subjectivity of individual consciousness. Each human interprets events in an entirely unique way. It may have been Zuckerberg’s conscious intention to make his viewers empathize by tricking them into believing they are in a disaster zone, but it’s only a trick. The fact that you can take the VR headset off and teleport back to your safety zone detracts from the experience.
But this personal subjectivity is what makes us unique individuals. In the 1980s, Jaron Lanier mused about VR tech eventually being completely fused with mental processes. He talked about an age of “post-symbolic communication” that invalidates simple language allowing everyone to be connected and sharing the same understanding — ‘perfect empathy’. Lev Manovich seems to have a more dystopian take on Lanier’s idea: “why should there be any need for linguistic symbols if everyone rather than being locked into a ‘prison-house of language’, will happily live in the ultimate nightmare of democracy – the single mental space that is shared by everyone, and where every communicative act is always ideal”. I have to agree with Manovich lest humanity eventually transform into something like Star Trek’s ‘Borg Collective’.
The Zuckerberg incident makes one question the true intentions of some using VR for seemingly charitable reasons. Media theorist Daniel Rushkoff makes a point that “The ability to form empathy in a medium has much less to do with how many senses are involved and more to do with how much control the humans have over the exchange and over what they’re doing.” He states that while he believes there are indeed empathetic possibilities with VR that it doesn’t necessarily mean the utilization of more senses and improved fidelity results in a higher level of empathy. Rushkoff also worries that media and technology companies are “making it (VR) less about what people might do with such powerful tools, and more about what they can do to us or sell us, once we’ve jacked into a reality they control.”
At its current state, VR has a long way to go in making real progress in repairing the world’s empathy deficit. More research needs to be done on the long-term effects of VR experiences. At its current fidelity, one simulation is unlikely to have a serious lasting effect on one’s overall empathy, but if it were something that people were exposed to on a regularly basis then it does have potential to change the way people think and feel. There are two obvious sides to VR: escapism through entertainment and empathy through understanding. We must be able to separate the two and not allow VR’s empathetic potential to be overpowered by corporate desires.
The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2016/apr/27/6×9-a-virtual-experience-of-solitary-confinement The Verge (on Zuckerberg) – https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/9/16450346/zuckerberg-facebook-spaces-puerto-rico-virtual-reality-hurricane
Lev Manovich’s ‘Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving-Image Media and the Spectator’
Len Manovich’s ‘The Language of New Media’
Douglas Rushkoff, Guernica Magazine – https://www.guernicamag.com/ava-kofman-will-virtual-reality-make-us-feel-better/
Simulation caught my attention more then anything. I think the idea to mimic something so close to the original is something that should stretch the idea of how technology can become a threat. Simulation can be a threat, while in class the video of “Tom Cruise” makes me think if they can do that to a celebrity how much further can they go to create chaos in the world?
Simulation can be an amazing thing too. With simulation, it can help benefit digital gaming systems to make them more real then ever. VR games are a great example. They make you feel like your actually in a time era, different part of the world or interacting with an person. I can see a future with more VR experiences, even though we have them today. With this type of technology who knows if a doctor can assist with a surgery from the comfort of their home.
You could be traveling around the world with this type of simulation. There are so many places that I would like to see that I don’t think I will be able to see in my life, so having this could really help people experience what other cultures are like.
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