The Game: Seeing Further by Styanding on the Shoulders of Giants
Theo Armour
What I woke up thinking about this morning:
The giants of today are Apple and Google.
They produce or cause to be produced the smart boxes in everybody's pockets.
The smart boxes can see and know their locations.
When you use one of these devices you are truly seeing further because you are standing on the shoulders of giants.
The highest and best use of this seeing further thing is currently called "augmented reality"
Augmented reality has not been a resounding success because all the current implementations reek of commercialism.
There's been no "poetry in motion" killer app so far.
Now, suppose you take out your iPhone and wave it around and it starts saying "windows on two sides", "corner store", "winding street".
At each pattern found, you can thumbs up or thumbs down.
The readout out compares your vote to the world as a whole and to the editors' votes.
High success in ratings allows you become a "master spotter"
Whenever you see a place with what you feel has a pattern you can take a photo and send it (along with location and bearing data) for addition to the database.
If you are highly successful at finding new patterns you might be entitled to be an editor.
Cities with lots of patterns found would be identified as highly livable cities. Cities might even begin to rival each other.
**
The first demo of the game would use humans looking at Google Maps Streetview to identify patterns
The second gen would use algorithms to identify winding streets, square etc and these would be verified using Mechanical Turk.
Third gen would use apps like http://www.sensopia.com/english/index.html to identify patterns almost entirely algorithmically
Michael Mehaffy
Michael Mehaffy
Theo Armour
Michael
>> Hey, I like your thinking! (Ward and I were exploring a similar line of thinking.)
>> Please keep going!....
Here we go. See below.
Theo
**
OK. So let's start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Left half of the web page: interactive view of the junction of two streets displayed Google Maps Streetview.
Right half: five checkboxes with titles such as "Window on two sides", "Corner shop", Winding street"
There is a question mark icon following the checkbox text. Clicking it brings up a detailed explanation of the particular requirements.
Player looks at the image and clicks on the qualities that can be rightfully assigned to what is depicted in the image.
Typically, three out of the five checkboxes are valid for the image.
Player checks at least three boxes and then clicks on the submit button
Reply screen appears which explains the rightness and wrongness of the player's choices.
The screen also displays statistics as to how the previous players have performed.
The player may then proceed to the next scene.
Repeat for ten scenes.
There are always just five choices though each new scene may add a new pattern to the mix
Upon completion of the ten scenes, the game is over and final statistics displayed.
The player is asked if another game is to be played and so on.
**
Using Google Docs forms and spreadsheets, the code for demo could be built by on person in a day.
Selecting ten locations and appropriate applicable patterns would probably be a collaborative work and take, say, five to ten days depending on availability.
Crafting the dozen or so pop-up text + diagram explanations as well as the correct/incorrect explanations for the selected patterns might also take a day or two,
**
Some additional thoughts:
Libraries of additional ten scenes would appear on a regular basis. Some libraries might concentrate on particular locations.
Additional libraries might include new patterns and even new domains and new types of patterns.
Each library should take about three to four minutes to complete.
Groups of libraries could be presented as a "course" in a Khan Academy-like fashion.
People interested in proposing new libraries write a short blurb about what they propose to study.
Players vote for the blurbs they wish to see written.
Players can purchase five dollar bags of tokens and assign these tokens to libraries they would like to see written.
Library authors could state a minimum price for creating the new library.
Players accounts would not be debited until the author's minimum is achieved.
Given success with the MVP development would progress on more esoteric games such as augmented reality versions of the scenes.
**
A "Where's Waldo?" focusing on identifying good ideas and nice ways of doing things…