Definition:

make greater; improve

Synonyms:

add to, aggrandize, amplify, beef up, boost, build, build up, compound, develop, enhance, enlarge, expand, extend, grow, heighten, increase, inflate, intensify, magnify, mount, multiply, pad, piggyback, progress, raise, reinforce, strengthen, sweeten, swell, tag on

What needs to be done to reality is not augmentation. We don't need to beef up our perceptions. We need to design, filter, negotiate them.

Reality Negotation?

(Working on the Metadata Games Project for Tiltfactor)

We need to tag 64,000 photographs with expert data.

Thousands of people are going to come and help us, some for hours at a time, and we plan on paying them... nothing. How can tagging an archive of old photographs ever be an enjoyable experience?

We hide the task behind the right game mechanics and some good old-fashioned playtesting! The data entry system for this database will need to be so enjoyable and instantly rewarding that people approach the task playfully. Like... a game?

Crowdsourcing is already being done sucessfully in other games. Von Ahn's "ESP Game" is reportedly played by some users more than 40 hours a week! Alas, his mechanic inspires players to provide only the most common, obvious tags regarding a given image. Our problem is that archives are specific. They require specialized, precise information in order for their contents to remain relevant or useful to the people who wish to use them. We want students, researchers and common users to be able to search for ridiculously specific items inside a given archive by traveling paths laid out by our players.

"Computer, show me happy pictures containing any species of duck in Florida before the year 1954."

Boom.

Our design will present a small suite of enjoyable games that encourages players to think harder and to dig deeper into the depths of human knowledge. We have three proposed games: -The Tree, the Snowball and the Tornado.

The three games utilize three different mechanics which work together to populate a nodal network of concepts and facts. It's actually... pretty awesome. The Tornado sucks in as many "dumb" tags as it can, the Tree provides structure and adds deep information to the network while the snowball takes popular bundles of concepts and uses them to form long connections within the network. YEAH! But the first step involves getting a few users to help us populate the very beginnings of our "Tree" so we have a structure to fill. I love the tree. Cole is a little less interested in the hierarchical organization of information. He has good reason to feel this way: in order for this project to actually be successful and flexible enough to sort information from 10^x users on any given archive, the network will need to be dynamic. Trees are rigid and static. We both admit that in order for the game to start, we need to add a bit of kindling, "rev the engine" if you will. The tree game is that kindling.

The "tree" involves navigating your way down a cascade of organized nodes of information, starting broad and earning points for successive levels of specificity. If we can get some Dartmouth professors and Rauner Special Collections enthusiasts to play, perhaps each of them will populate the section of the network they know best. If they encounter places in the "tree" where the descriptive term they're searching for isn't provided, they can add to the network and forever "own" that location in our web of human understanding. We'll have expert users sign up to play and pit their academic egos against one another. "How many nodes can you add!?" "How far down the data mine did you go?" Users who add enough information in each branch of knowledge get to insert their own answers regarding the "mood" and "meaning" of the image provided. It isn't really a tree... more like a Rhizome.

Here's a picture of a duck:

Our computer has no idea what it is, and you do.

Maybe you have expert information regarding it.

We want that.

Give us data regarding this picture's Object, Time, Culture and Place, and we'll let you enter your own personal information regarding the photo. After all, you're an expert!

"The latin name for the natural/animal/bird object in this photo is Anatidae"

Boom, 100 points and a new node in your name.

I've been researching ways in which western culture has organized the contents of its information. Almanac's evolved from astrological charts by adding information relevant to the time. Encyclopedias evolved from dictionaries through elaboration. Our "Crowd Miner" needs to evolve from Wikipedia, toward dictionary-like specificity but bringing with it facebook levels of public commentary and flexibility. We need this little tree to grow into a construct that evolves from all past attempts in its ability to self-organize. The mechanics are the key: what we're struggling to perfect.

So I'm sitting here trying to flesh out the "tree of all possible things you could ever have" as far down as I can go without reaching for the almanac. It's a pretty humbling task. I realize that we're really inventing a new language with its own rhetoric, syntax and types of meaning. To speak this language, you have to use our mouth, our interface. Know what i mean?  Ideas pass through our interface and get filtered into a language of symbols and data. We have to make the filters just right.

I'm using a mental-mapping program called x-mind that is insanely useful (and free!). Check it out at www.xmind.com.

-Brendan

Hype hype hype: It's not about the iPad.

The buzz should really be attributed to the deeper changes the iPad represents. We are interested in it because this little tablet-thingy molds to our bodies, to our hands and to our environment way more than any of the computers we're using now. And we know that more like it will come, and that they'll be even better at integrating with... us.

So the iPad is of vital interest because it provides a new form of a competitive advantage. Apple is basically selling a new $500 organ that sorts information for your brain. Like a kidney that better sorts out your blood. 

"Who has one? Should I?" As these machines completely change the way we live and think, the question really becomes: who can afford a $500 kidney, and what competitive advantages over everyone else do they recieve?


Darwin would probably already have his ordered. 

(Jokes. Thing doesn't even have a camera. As AR developers we really felt let down by this + the fact that you can't plug peripheral cameras in. We'll keep dreaming.)

This is what I'm talking about. Keiichi Matsuda 's final project for a master's in Architecture is the closet look at the future implications of what we're doing with all this "AR!" stuff. 

3D branded holograms, more than we can even handle. The confusing event in this video? The user chooses to turn all of the ads back on as he/she leaves the kitchen. why would anyone do this? In order to keep their sanity, users will have to keep vigilant watch over their content filters.

Or, they'll subscribe to a "belief circle" that doesn't beat them over the head with useless content... 

Like Hyperlynx, perhaps. Give this guy's video a look. We're going to try to contact him and figure out what he's reading. (stuff is brilliant)

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

So if I post about the AR conference in my new academic group's website I get a badge to wear. I want the badge: 

Dear HASTAC.org,

I'm rarely in a conversation for long before "Augmented Reality" comes up; it's a bit of a problem:

"Alternate Realities? What are you talking about?"

"Well you take a QR code and use it to orient a digital camera in real space so that you can lay 3D objects and information over the real world."

"Why would you do that?"

"You can create interactive forms of media, change the aesthetics of your surroundings, access useful location-specific data without..."

"You're crazy!"

I have a dream. I dream of being in a room with people who are not only aware of, but made excited by the prospect of emerging AR and MR technologies.

Luckily for me, such a room will exist October 19th-22nd at The International Symposium on Augmented and Mixed Reality.

I cordially invite all HASTAC members to join me as we represent humanistic and academic interests in a forum traditionally dominated by technological and engineering-oriented discourse. Let's bring some thoughtful concern to this truly exciting branch of interactive media.

For the first time this year, ISMAR will feature an "Arts and Humanities" section in their conference:

"The ISMAR 2009 Arts, Media and Humanities Program will present the breadth and depth of the Mixed and Augmented Reality research and application.

The program will include:

- research presentations, - discussion panels, - keynote speakers from Arts, Media and Humanities, - hands-on demonstrations, - interactive participation, etc."

As representatives of HASTAC, we will attend these discussions and demonstrations with a passion to contribute and an eye for academic quality.

Most importantly, we can try to ensure that those intimately involved in AR recognize the potential influences reality modification could have on the arts, our society and human thought over time. This isn't just a fad, it's the internet coming to bear on physical reality.

So join me to ask some questions, or email me if you have any questions or interests that you'd like to have represented at the conference.

So I wasn't really sure how to sell it. I have no idea why I'm going, I have no idea what it will be like or where the tech really is in its development. Giving the academics an opportunity to criticize felt like a good tactic for recruitment...but I also believed it.

We need to ask them questions they can't yet answer. There is no "them." Just us. The tech isn't at a point where it can really be shown as dangerous. We have to dream ahead. How things come together... will determine everything. Is discourse and guesswork part of the development of a new, profit-driven technology?

Only if it affects the market.

-Dr. Cosmos

D+D has me thinking about visualization; it's just a better way to build fictive space. So here's some interactive fiction Nick Montfort suggested which plays off the same effect:

Varicella by Adam Cadre

Bronze by Emily Short

Aisle by Sam Barlow

Book and Volume by Montfort

Then, if you're looking for a multiplayer experience, I used to mess around on DARTmud, which is Everquest meets.... a really good book. I like it more than the single player experiences, but sadly the world is a bit empty now that graphics have taken over: 

www.dartmud.com As if any of us have time for this stuff.

-Cos

[Originally posted by Cos @ www.tiltfactor.org, check us out]

The word "design" comes from the German "da", meaning there, and "sein", which means being. So design is simply the way of "there-being" that all humans have.

We see it more as an activity now, the steps that one can take toward improving or strengthening the human condition.

Game designers go a step further.

We are people who construct situations which remodel the human way of "there-being" around new goal structures. We evoke the human sense of being within fictional, simulated environments. We let people fly, swim and build on scales that reality does not permit.

Yet these experiences fail if they do not remain loyal to the basic human sense of being that each player brings to a designed world. Game designers get to build the "there" so as to evoke being, and the "there" we build can be sculpted in ways that evoke certain aspects of the human mind or influence a subtle shift in the human way of being.

External circumstances have a direct influence on human conceptions of the self. Thus many basic aspects of humanity (murder, violence, destruction....) become enhanced and rewarded when the goals within a system are mainly combative or competitive. The goal structures that comprise games can be tailored to attract escapism, hallucination, and gamer compulsion for the sake of corporate profit. These experiences can evoke lower aspects of human "being" while repressing higher functions like creativity, community or thoughtfulness. Many games evoke both.

But at [Hyperlynx] we choose goals that foster education and inspiration.

Sounds simple but it's pretty hard. It actually might be impossible to build a "there" without it's own bias, it's own tailored agenda that leaves out certain aspects of human "being".

Is it okay to design only for the aspects of human "there-being" with which we agree?

Or does doing so just lead to repression?

Brought up hosting a Live Action Role-Playing Game as a possible side "experiment" for the class to carry out today. Also ran across a documentary on the hobby directed by Christopher Pleass that presents the obscure practise in a reasonable, positive light. In fact, I now think that adults rediscovering meaningless, childish "play" is not only interesting, but increasingly necessary in our hectic world.

An interviewed LARP'er discusses his fear that future online-games will dominate the role-playing hobby market, driving live-action into further obscurity.

With my concerns about the addictive, anti-corporeal nature of MMORPG's, I must say I am interested in trying, well, "play." Outdoors. With rubber swords. I think I'd be a minotaur.  And these.

[In 2008] Competitive video gaming is growing rapidly, but

rarely receives appropriate coverage. By appropriate I mean...

1) The commentators are, well, lame. I watched the most recent ESL/MLG World of Warcraft 3v3 tournament online; the guys calling it were worse than McLovin. They need real commentators who can actually get the average viewer excited about what is happening. (hey MLG, I have radio experience, LFG)

2) Better Camera Angles! There should be people in-game, ghosts, recording these matches with professional precision. Can you imagine a well-shot Battlefield 2142 battle or one where an unlimited number of spectators could ghost through the map at once? People could literally follow their favorite players. It'll happen, but we don't have the technology (bandwidth) yet.

Here's where I try to say something meaningful:

Professional gaming is currently less popular than actual sports only because digital technology has yet to reach a certain point. This point, this change, ((the singularity?)) will present digital games smooth enough to enjoyed by spectators, cheap enough for the general population to actually play or understand and complex enough to provide a few, talented professionals with opportunities to excel beyond those offered by the physical world.

Pushing their minds beyond the limitations of their bodies, future e-gaming stars should attain broadly appreciable levels of skill, and due fame. Actually we touch on this in The Assemblage, but more on that later. So yeah, e-gaming is something to watch. If augmented reality becomes popular and affordable, I'd much rather engage in darkfall-like castle warfare in 3D in my yard than watch dudes throw a football miles away.

THE POINT IS: Watch this if you want to see the potential for e-gaming greatness (58 seconds of it)  Watch this if you want to see the whole match (3:00)

Well it's January 2010. Why am I posting this two years ago? To build narrative, my man, NARRATIVE. Where did we start? What are we trying to do. Nick and I have been making worlds for quite awhile now, writing about what we'd like to do, thinking. Thinking. 

And now we have an audience? We will? I'd like someone to read this, but that means my writing will pre-suppose someone's judgement. I've been told recently the my style is jarring. 

Yeah.

So I'm going back into old blogs and pulling out the notes/posts/emails that led up to where we are now:

We want to make GOOD outdoor video games. Humanistic, holistic multiplayer experiences. Holograms that make life more fun. Because we know how far gone some of the current games can leave their players.

We'd like HL to stand as a counter-example against the advertisement-overloaders that are sure to enter the industry with time. 

Oh Yeah? You've got a hat that lets me play Farmville while I'm at work without anyone noticing that my brain is gone? All I have to do is sign a contract that lets you subliminally advertise to me without my noticing?

NO. Cognitive technology is going to be healthy clean fun or our name aint Hyper. No neuroviruses. No drone walmart armies. No taking advantage of player compulsion to churn out the bucks. We're going to use advanced tech to make kickass games. But with great power comes...

"What if the games are too much fun?!" "What if I can't stop hunting for holograms with my smart glasses? (www.vuzix.com)

I'm fine with that. Take breaks. Maybe that's the only difference. "HyperLynx Studios: the game developers who want you to go outside and chill for a bit."

Escape 2D escapism. It's bad for your back.

OKAY SO the following posts will be recycled from the past few months and dated accordingly. When you catch up to January 2010, well... then we start for real.

-Cos