Tutorial Notes 16-10-12

Although Micropolis offers an interesting analogue between the formation of a social system to manage the virtual system within the game, perhaps consider how another game or activity might affect the group dynamics.

Having said that, I should focus on the actual group social system facilitated by the game, rather than the mechanics of the game itself.

What is at stake for the participants in the workshop? Numerous people have suggested some sort of gambling system to force the participants to engage with each other and stimulate tension, pushing their desire to succeed. I'm unconvinced - I am precisely exploring how people can work as a group without a selfish interest dictated by central authority (in the case of the workshop, that would be me). The participants should come to their own conclusions about what is at stake - perhaps the desire to create a functional and adaptable social system would be enough of an impetus for the participants to wish the group to succeed?

Barend asks the question: Can we be productive without a hierarchy?
I can slightly rephrase this question to summarise one of my dominant interests in this year's graduate project: How can we develop a non-hierarchical system that enables us to remain productive? I am not interested in absolutes (the impossibility of overcoming hierarchy) but in challenging the preconception that hierarchy is necessary for society to function - hierarchy prevents entropy. Messages are entropic, and according to Norbert Wiener, it is the job of language to create information within the message. Information is the negative of entropy: it maintains the state of organisation within the stream of messages. Perhaps I can explore some of these ideas more directly in my future experiments.