Activism, Science and the Infinite Game: Exploring the relationship between science and environmental activism

According to James Carse, humanity plays two types of games. We play games that are finite and games that are infinite. As human activity alters the biosphere, ecosystems are collapsing, biodiversity is declining, and the climate is changing. In the face of these challenges, the games of scientists, science communicators and environmental activists often align or intersect. This thesis explores the relationship between science and environmental activism, and how they affect one another’s finite and infinite games. The discussion covers how they positively affect one another’s games and how they negatively affect one another’s games, with case studies to illustrate each relationship. I found that science can be a tool in activists’ games to reform policy, challenge industries, and empower communities at the forefront of environmental conflicts. Activism can motivate scientific investigations, strategically further the public and political reach of research, and contribute to the epistemic integrity of the sciences. Activism can negatively affect science by obscuring scientific findings, jeopardising the credibility of scientific efforts, and perpetuating a combative approach to environmental challenges. Furthermore, science can negatively affect activism by diverting the public imagination from relationships that enable environmental injustice, by perpetuating epistemic injustice, and undermining emotions in environmental conflicts. This exploration sheds light on how the games of activists and scientists can further the infinite game for environmental justice, but also on the ways their games reinforce socio-political systems that underpin environmental injustices

An Investigation of Cognitive Implications in the Design of Computer Games

Computer games have been touted for their ability to engage players in cognitive activities (e.g., decision making, learning, planning, problem solving). By ‘computer game’ we mean any game that uses computational technology as its platform, regardless of the actual hardware or software; games on personal computers, tablets, game consoles, cellphones, or specialized equipment can all be called computer games. However, there remains much uncertainty regarding how to design computer games so that they support, facilitate, and promote the reflective, effortful, and conscious performance of cognitive activities. The goal of this dissertation is to relieve some of this uncertainty, so that the design of such computer games can become more systematic and less ad hoc. By understanding how different components of a computer game influence the resulting cognitive system, we can more consciously and systematically design computer games for the desired cognitive support. This dissertation synthesizes concepts from cognitive science, information science, learning science, human-computer interaction, and game design to create a conceptual design framework. The framework particularly focuses on the design of: gameplay, the player-game joint cognitive system, the interaction that mediates gameplay and the cognitive system, and the components of this interaction. Furthermore, this dissertation also includes a process by which researchers can explore the relationship between components of a computer game and the resulting cognitive system in a consistent, controlled, and precise manner. Using this process, three separate studies were conducted to provide empirical support for different aspects of the framework; these studies investigated how the design of rules, visual interface, and the core mechanic influence the resulting cognitive system. Overall then, the conceptual framework and three empirical studies presented in this dissertation provide designers with a greater understanding of how to systematically design computer games to provide the desired support for any cognitive activity

Learning the Rules of the Game: The Nature of Game and Classroom Supports When Using a Concept-Integrated Digital Physics Game in the Middle School Science Classroom

Games in science education is emerging as a popular topic of scholarly inquiry. The National Research Council recently published a report detailing a research agenda for games and science education entitled Learning Science Through Computer Games and Simulations (2011). The report recommends moving beyond typical proof-of-concept studies into more exploratory and theoretically-based work to determine how best to integrate games into K-12 classrooms for learning , as well as how scaffolds from within the game and from outside the game (from peers and teachers) support the learning of applicable science. This study uses a mixed-methods, quasi-experimental design with an 8th grade class at an independent school in southern Connecticut to answer the following questions: 1. What is the nature of the supports for science content learning provided by the game, the peer, and the teacher, when the game is used in a classroom setting? 2. How do the learning gains in the peer support condition compare to the solo play condition, both qualitatively and quantitatively? The concept-integrated physics game SURGE (Scaffolding Understanding through Redesigning Games for Education) was selected for this study, as it was developed with an ear towards specific learning theories and prior work on student understandings of impulse, force, and vectors. Stimulated recall interviews and video observations served as the primary sources and major patterns emerged through the triangulation of data sources and qualitative analysis in the software QSR NVivo 9. The first pattern which emerged indicated that scaffolding from within the game and outside the game requires a pause in game action to be effective, unless that scaffolding is directly useful to the player in the moment of action. The second major pattern indicated that both amount and type of prior gaming experience has somewhat complex effects on both the uses of supports and learning outcomes. In general, a high correlation was found between students who were more successful navigating supports from the game, the teacher, and the peer and higher gain scores from pre- to posttest. However, students with a lot of prior game experience that found the game to be easy without much assistance did not do as well from pre- to posttest as they did not need as much assistance from the game to do well and therefore missed out on important physics connections to impulse, force, and vectors. However, those students with little prior game experience did not find game scaffolds as useful and did not do as well from pre- to posttest without significant teacher and peer support to bolster or supplant the game's intended scaffolding. Implications for educators, educational game designers, and games in science education researchers are presented. It is argued that teachers must find ways to extract those scaffolds from the game which are easy to miss or require failure to activate so that all students, even those who find the game easy, are exposed to the intended learning in the game. Ideally, game designers are encouraged to find new ways to present scaffolds such that players of any ability can benefit from the connections from the game to physics

Mathematical models of games of chance: Epistemological taxonomy and potential in problem-gambling research

Games of chance are developed in their physical consumer-ready form on the basis of mathematical models, which stand as the premises of their existence and represent their physical processes. There is a prevalence of statistical and probabilistic models in the interest of all parties involved in the study of gambling – researchers, game producers and operators, and players – while functional models are of interest more to math-inclined players than problem-gambling researchers. In this paper I present a structural analysis of the knowledge attached to mathematical models of games of chance and the act of modeling, arguing that such knowledge holds potential in the prevention and cognitive treatment of excessive gambling, and I propose further research in this direction

Culturo-Scientific Storytelling

In this article, we reflect on the functions of outreach in developing the modern scientific mind, and discuss its essential importance in the modern society of rapid technological development. We embed our approach to outreach in culturo-scientific thinking. This is constituted by embracing disciplinary thinking (in particular creativity) whilst appreciating the epistemology of science as an evolving dialogue of ideas, with numerous alternative perspectives and uncertain futures to be managed. Structuring scientific knowledge as an assemblage of interacting and evolving discipline-cultures, we conceive of a culturo-scientific storytelling to bring about positive transformations for the public in these thinking skills and ground our approach in quantum science and technologies (QST). This field has the potential to generate significant changes for the life of every citizen, and so a skills-oriented approach to its education, both formal and non-formal, is essential. Finally, we present examples of such storytelling in the case of QST, the classification and evaluation of which correspond to future work in which this narrative approach is studied in action

Game design research: an introduction to theory & practice

Design research is an active academic field covering disciplines such as architecture, graphic, product, service, interaction, and systems design. Design research aims to understand not only the designed end products but also how design as an activity unfolds. The book demonstrates different approaches to design research in game design research

Rewriting the Matrix of Life. Biomedia Between Ecological Crisis and Playful Actions

The paper discusses concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘life’ as subjected to historical changes. The 21st century seems to be obsessed with ‘life’ and ‘nature’, which are reconfigured as objects of simulation practices and of a multitude of technoscientific enterprises as well as of political struggle. The historical influences and epistemological shifts of systems thinking are significant within two distinctive and interwoven fields: On the one hand the discourse of environmentalism with the paradigm of ecological crises, centered around ideas of resource management, sustainability, the general idea of an ‘endangered nature’ and the interconnectedness of global politics and individual actions. On the other hand the optimistic promises of artificial life, with synthetic biology and digital cyborg technologies as its avantgarde, which are very much driven by the idea of technoscientific mastery to surpass natures ‘weakness’ and by desires to improve ‘life’ and to even refashion ‘life itself’. On the field of historical ecology, concepts of systems thinking are traced back to the middle of the 19th century, where ecological thought emerged at the intersections of biology and geography. Meandering between vitalistic, holistic, and mechanistic concepts, between living and non-living elements, systems ecology finally substitutes ‘nature’, which in turn is re-established in its new ‘gestalt’ as computer simulated world model since the early 1970s. Resurrected as an interrelation of system variables at the level of global simulations ‘nature’ strikes as a zombie. As a second turning point of the rewriting of the matrix, of life we will discuss the advance of ‘games’ since the early 1970ies, with the example of ‘Game of life’ (‘Life’) as a significant landmark. When ‘life’ becomes ‘Life’, it is by computerized modeling in terms of dynamic processes. Computer games can be thought of as instances of the popularization of cybernetic system thinking, functioning as interdiscoursive fragments between the specialized discourse of system theories and the sphere of ‘common sense’ (Nohr 2008), where the specific “gaming situation” (Eskelinen 2001) foregrounds playful individual action and manipulation of system objects within a set of given rules or the manipulation of system rules itself on the level of the ‘code’. We will argue that both, the ecological discourse and the algorithmic model of self-reproduction of ‘Life’, are historically and systematically related manifestations and mediations of system theory. While they can be regarded as referring to different scales of application (macro-economic reasoning in the case of global eco-systems, modeling of bottom-up-complexity on a micro-level in the case of ‘Life’) and belonging to distinctive disciplines (economic and ecological research vs. mathematical theory of automata and artificial life studies), they share some common ground in being “algorithmic media” (Marks 2014) that are functional as “rhetorical software” (Doyle 1997) and as “allegorithms” (Galloway 2006) of the new compositions of the techno-biological and techno-ecological situation of the 21st century

Information and Design: Book Symposium on Luciano Floridi’s The Logic of Information

Purpose – To review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Design/methodology/approach – Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions. Findings – Floridi’s PI, including this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects. Research implications – Floridi’s PI work is technical philosophy for which many LIS scholars do not have the training or patience to engage with, yet doing so is rewarding. This suggests a role for translational work between philosophy and LIS. Originality/value – The book symposium format, not yet seen in LIS, provides forum for sustained, multifaceted and generative dialogue around ideas

Epistemological Foundations for Neuroeconomics

Neuroeconomics is an emerging field crossing neuroscientific data, the use of brain-imaging tools, experimental and behavioral economics, and an attempt at a better understanding of the cognitive assumptions that underlie theoretical predictive economic models. In this paper the authors try two things: 1) To assess the epistemological biases that affect Neuroeconomics as it is currently done. A number of significant experiments are discussed in that perspective. 2) To imagine an original way - apart from what is already being done - to run experiments in brain-imaging that are relevant to the discussion of rationality assumptions at the core of economic theory