Just rolling these newly constructed words around my tongue feels strange. So you are probably asking “what the heck is this?!?”
These can be done in any order:
- visit the website: http://game.connected-citizens.org/
- visit the intro page: http://game.connected-citizens.org/about
It’s a big “what if we could use social media on a global scale to think up answers (and questions) for all our problems?” game. Sound ambitious? Some impossible? Well, it is an experiment. And it seems to be generating some rather interesting conversations (see the blog). The game part comes from awarding “points” for particpation. Which is a strange model, but it does give a small amount of incentive to go for that next level if you will.
I am participating more for the sake of participating, just to see what happens. It makes me wonder “what if we tried this on a local scale?” There are some obvious drawbacks – the move vocal, the most passionate, the more zealous folks are the ones making certain ideas and thoughts percolate to the top. The process obscures the smaller voices (especially the non-participants). Having said that, I think some of the louder voices attempt to speak for the underdogs. Of course it is not a perfect situation.
What good will come out of it? Great question. For myself, I have already learned of several things. For instance:
- BudgIT – A Nigerian attempt to “open the checkbooks” and allow citizens to see all financial data using infographics (I know, I know, the comments about spam are right around the corner): http://yourbudgit.com/
- Putnam’s paradox – attempts to explain why greater diversification leads to less collaboration: http://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/Putnams-Paradox.html
I confess, I am also participating because I think the concept is fascinating. I have no idea if it is really useful or not, but it really is a novel use of modern technology. I am dearly hoping the hosts data mine this provocative pool of thoughts and give us something to run with.
The game ends at 2:pm CST Wednesday, Jan 23.
23 January 2013 8:59 pm at 8:59 pm
Pattsi asked what I learned from this experience. Aside from the things I already mentioned, I have several other observations:
- Lots of people have lots of ideas, but they boil down to a lot of overlap; we merely use different words and/or different meanings to convey the same basic concepts
- The folks out in Finland have some really cool things going on educationally
- the interface of the game is very kooky and extremely hard to follow a thread in, but the medium itself provided some very satisfying deliberative moments; there was very much an atmosphere of “hmm… I had not thought of that, tell me more” or “that is a good start, but what if we ….”. I wonder how it would work if we tried this face to face from time to time.
- I thought it was pretty obvious that the participants were mostly from similar cuts of cloth; I could be wrong, but I don’t think we had that much core diversity. Nobody really believed our current government is the best thing since sliced bread, no outlandish religious nut jobs… I would be curious to learn if we had participants from locales with stricter censorship.
- By the end of the game, I didn’t feel like even trying to win – the whole thing was a bit overwhelming and I was a bit lost
25 January 2013 7:20 am at 7:20 am
Welcome to the world of decision making.
Hard o get folks to listen to each other and grab ideas from say Finland.