Half-thought out

I have been kind of not feeling well today. This makes me sad, generally speaking. For most of the day, I was indeed sad.

I realize also that being sick gives me a chance to be a bit creative. I am working the detail out now, so bear with me if it's a little unworked:

Networks are inherently irrational if they are designed by humans. Why? Because, we are in a very strange way both inescapable egoists, even solopists, yet we are too weak to survive without interdependence. So, the idea of the network is fundamental to the survival of the individual, but the individuality of of each human sabotoges the whole venture.

How does this apply to games? Quite obviously, the idea of gameplay across networks is the future. Being an anachronistic fellow, I play old tabletop games and I take a degree of pride in the charming atmosphere of storytelling that is the face to face experience of role-playing. Even so, I cannot deny that the technology of today allows geographically dispersed groups of gamers to interact and experience a real exchange of information. RPG's with thousands of playing interacting are a reality, and there's something cutting-edge about it. The exciting thing is, it's growing, it's changing, and, because the game is populated by human-controlled agents, it's become a society. With better acces to networks and fast connections becoming widely available, I can only see the growth of network gaming to the point that it will eclipse all other forms of social exchange for many nerdy gamer types already without adequate social outlets.

The nerds of tomorrow could become willing shut-ins, if we aren't that way already.

But I digress. The main thrust of the argument is simply that networks can't behave rationally. The first arument I advance is that people are these conflicted creatures, with self-isolating tendancies and maddening social needs and realtionships. It's not possible to behave like ants, where each ant is really nothing more than a little piece of the social machine. We're too smart indvidually to act as automations and yet too stupid to subjegate our immediate needs for longer-term societal goals. We're smart, big babies. And thus, because we're not rational, groups of us can't be rational.

So, networks we create ultimately can't be rational either. The bigger the network, the less rational it becomes.

Just an idea I had I figured I'd share

Comments

[justin]

Will electronic entertainment replace large segments of human interaction? Chat with strangers who more closely share our interests, interspersed with quests for shared goals or competition.

But whether millions of folks communicating that way will have over-arching, organized behaviour, that's the subject of a number of provocative books these days. I think Jane has read a bunch of them - Emergence, I recently read Linked, and soon Smart Mobs will be out, examining the behaviour of people networked with machines and using software to communicate for an increasing part of their lives. Network-game-based-communication is a young discipline, but Zack, the biggest online game in the world in Korea is particular in that the expanding networks of people in those games have used the tools provided and their own arrangements to organize in some ways that seem to match the theories of people who study networks, especially the folks behind Linked. I would recommend you read that, if only so I can see if you believe the author when he posits that we can't help but organize along certain lines when we form large groups.

[sollyz]

So, there are many more books to read I see.

If you all don't know me, you probably don't realize the massive sloth that is my academic existence. And, if you know me, you know I'll now have to read at least Emergence and Linked. Jane says Emergence is short, and both of you are pushing Linked.

Having reread my initial post (and ignoring the spelling errors) I still agree with the thesis that networks are inherently irrational. That is, networks designed by humans.

I am fascinated by social insect behaviour and look forward to learning more about how ants and humans differ in the networks they make, or perhaps I'll find that we (ants and people) behave more closely in line as networked creatures than I initially posited.

Boy, I love intellectual exchange.

[pepitopea]

briefly.

in regards to your opinion on human constructed networks, you may be confusing "paradoxical" with "irrational."

consequently, you may want to ammend your conclusion to: "the bigger the network, the greater the paradox."

it would also help if you defined your terms more concretely (i.e. "network," "irrationality," etc.)

pepito pea

[Bertram]

Think simple. Learn different. Macinstruct.net

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