Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/36-hour-online-game-research-exercise-tp7583780p7583782.html
On 9/10/13 10:12 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> UCSF is running an online game to explore possible avenues of
> development for medical research, education, and practice, from 8AM
> Sep 11 to 8PM Sep 12 at
http://www.ucsf2025.org/. There are some
> interesting ideas in the promotional video already, such as open
> sourcing the biomedical research literature and getting insurance
> companies to microfund medical research.
Roger -
This is a very slick vision-caste/vision-quest worthy of the best "day
after tomorrow" piece of fiction. Each of the elements they identify:
New models of education with ad-hoc components built in; Crowd sourced
data, research, and funding; Viz - Big as well as ubiquitous; etc. are
very compelling.
I could take a curmudgeon stance on all of these elements and poke holes
in them based on existing "tried and true" paradigms, and I'm sure many
will, just as others will grasp at the shiny new toys and hope-triggers
implied by it all and declare a premature "success".
This vision is probably familiar to many of us in technology as we have
probably helped in small ways to build the collective consciousness of
the possibilities suggested here. In some sense, it is a "ripe" future.
The only fundamental criticism I have of the vision involves *further*
speeding up and fragmenting human attention and awareness. It suggests
something like becoming part of a hive mind. The vision as caste here,
suggests that we would only experience the benefits of such. If Utopian
literature is of any use, it illustrates for us how Utopias and
Dystopias are duals.
Fortunately I trust the young (and not so) people in my life to be able
to both embrace the possibilities suggested here and consider the
downsides of what this type of vision offers them for their careers,
their health, and the very qualitative quality of life that is being
suggested.
If we thought texting while driving was unsafe, just imagine "doing
research while driving"...
- Steve
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