Synthetic Realities, Social Labs & Excellence
February 20, 2009
- Orchestration of Networks
Orchestration of Excellence in Networks
Orchestration of Excellence in Pluralistic Networks
Orchestration of Excellence in Pluralistic Hybrid Networks
Fernando Flores has been insisting, for few years, that there is a variety of technologies - such as MMORPG- that creates and support the development of social, persistent virtual worlds. In other words, technologies that creates synthetic realities. The opportunity that this synthetic realities open is huge. They can be used as laboratories and simulators for innovating in social practices, as well as in developing practical mastery.
Many of these MMORPG -WoW- are political in its nature and involve a rich variety of activities -career, economics, business, community, militar, etc-. Consequently, they offers a natural space for social involvement. However, in order to be used as Labs or Simulators, significant adjustment to the game and the logic of playing the game should be introduced. The Lab do not operate and can't operate with the logic of Wizzard Entertainment and its game designers. The presuposition that playing a particular MMORPG will develop leadership, management or any other social skill is greatly misleading. Games by itself often become a painful addiction.
A twiked MMORPG -or in the near future a customized simulator- offers something that traditional education -with few exceptions as martial arts or performing arts- have not been able to offer until know: mastering practices. Following H. Dreyfus argument, he claims that mastering a practice requires social involvement. Only in social context that imply social involvement individuals can experience, observe and modify their emotional dispositions, encounter emergent aspect in their worlds, and endlessly refine their habits. MMORPG are not just social, but massive, diverse, global and hybrid providing a new horizon for developing and "orchestrating" masteries...
A new wave of technology driven transformations?