MetaFilter posts tagged with civilization

Minecraft: Can Make You Paranoid as Hell.

quin — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:00:18 -0800

Videogames Are Drugs: Dorkly presents a few comics which compare videogames to their analogous drugs.

"You can't have a fight because you don't have two sides."

ChuckRamone — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:39:00 -0800

In his retirement speech, Donald Kagan, eminent historian of Ancient Greece, sounds the alarm about the decline of American democracy and Western Civilization. The Academy is fragmented, overrun by political correctness, and lacks focus. American society is plagued with similar problems, and Americans are no longer self-sufficient enough. Is his lament simply an echo of declinism?

“Rituals are the glue that holds social groups together.”

the man of twists and turns — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:56:15 -0800

Social Evolution - The Ritual Animal "Praying, fighting, dancing, chanting — human rituals could illuminate the growth of community and the origins of civilization."

Legare presented Brazilians with a variety of simpatias, and found that people judged them as more effective when they involved a large number of repetitive procedural steps that must be performed at a specific time and in the presence of religious icons. “We're built to learn from others,” she says, which leads us to repeat actions that seemed to work for someone else — “even if we don't understand how they produce the desired outcomes”.

Human Rites: "Rituals bind us, in modern societies and prehistoric tribes alike. But can our loyalties stretch to all of humankind?"

Human populations living side-by-side tend to have a lot in common. They adopt the same basic techniques of production, use similar tools and natural resources, live in similar kinds of houses and so on. At the level of practical affairs, there might be little to tell them apart. However, their rituals are a different story altogether. Arbitrary conventions on how to achieve certain goals — placate the gods, or ensure an adequate crop — can assume any pattern: in straightforward physical terms, they don’t actually have to do anything. And yet they are far from impotent. Indeed, in social terms they can have very significant effects. To start with, they serve as admirable group markers precisely because they are of no use to those outside the group. And they don’t just demarcate people. Rituals also bind them together. How? And how far can they stretch?

via Overcoming Bias: Farmer's New Rituals The University of Oxford's Institute Of Cognitive And Evolutionary Anthropology's Ritual, Community & Conflict Project. Markets, Community Size, And The Evolution Of Fairness And Punishment (PDF)

These results suggest that modern prosociality is not solely the product of an innate psychology, but also reflects norms and institutions that have emerged over the course of human history.

The Adaptive Value Of Religious Ritual (PDF)

Religion has probably always served to enhance the union of its practitioners; unfortunately, there is also a dark side to this unity. If the intragroup solidarity that religion promotes is one of its significant adaptive benefits, then from its beginning religion has probably always played a role in intergroup conflicts. In other words, one of the benefits for individuals of intragroup solidarity is the ability of unified groups to defend and compete against other groups.

The Glue That Binds Ritual Is Power The Primacy Of Ritual Over Language Emile Durkheim: religion – the very idea, part 1: the analysis of moral life "Durkheim's work on the sacred offers a starting point for a public language for thinking about the moral basis for society"

Civilizations and E-Mail

spaltavian — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:03:31 -0800

A team of computer researchers analyzed ten million Yahoo! e-mails and noticed a phenomenon: "E-mails tend to flow much more frequently between countries with certain economic and cultural similarities". The paper, titled "The Mesh of Civilizations and International Email Flows" was written by researchers at Stanford, Cornell, Yahoo! and Qatar’s Computational Research Institute. It places the research in the context of Samuel Huntington’s much-maligned “Clash of Civilizations" theory: "In this respect we cautiously assign a level of validity to Huntington’s contentions, with a few caveats. The ﬁrst issue was already mentioned – overlap between civilizations and other factors contributing to countries’ level of association. Huntington’s thesis is clearly reﬂected in the graph presented in Figure 3, but some of these civilizational clusters are found to be explained by other factors in Table 5. The second limitation concerns the fact that we investigated a communication network. There is no necessary “clash” between countries that do not communicate, and Huntington’s thesis was concerned primarily with ethnic conﬂict." We see in the study that nations placed into the same "civilization" per Huntington’s definitions do e-mail each other more frequently than nations e-mail nations e-mail outside their civilization. The authors themselves, however, add “the advancement of an explanation is premature.”

The Board Games Women Make

ocherdraco — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:32:02 -0800

Ever played Monopoly? Then you've played a board game that was designed by a woman (it was, under its original title, "The Landlord's Game," the creation of Elizabeth Magie). Want to play more board games designed by women? Let's go! Hat tip to subject_verb_remainder's post on video games made by women for making me think to compile this list. Like that post, this is not a comprehensive list. I am relying heavily on Board Game Geek for my information (I drew from several GeekLists there, though as I wasn't able to come up with more information for every designer on those lists, not all are included here). For each designer, games are listed according to rank on Board Game Geek (a rough indicator of popularity). (The one exception is Maureen Hiron. I wanted to give a sense of how long she's been designing games, so some of her early games are included although they're not her highest ranked games.) A B Lisa Bowman-Steenson and Lori Dieda together comprise Gut Bustin' Games, which grew out of their game Redneck Life, which drew on Bowman-Steenson's childhood, as she puts it, as "the redheaded stepchild of an auto body guy (yes, the body shop had a keg-er-ator)." Video interview at Origins 2007 with both designers about their games Redneck Life and Trailer Park Wars. Joint games: Trailer Park Wars (2007): You must place quality Tenants in your trailers, create a fun and friendly atmosphere by adding some sweet Amenities, and go about destroying the other trailer parks…no matter what it takes. Surface to Trailer Missile? Molotov Beer Can? A Tornado? You Bet. Redneck Life (2003): A variation on The Game of Life. A roll of 2 dice determines the grade you complete in school, which sets you up for one of 11 fabulous careers such as Mullet Salon Operator or Monster Truck Announcer. Journey through Blue Collar Americana by going into debt to purchase a vehicle, get married, divorced, re-married, purchase a home, and raise a passel of young'ens. Bowman-Steenson's solo game: Oh Gnome You Don't! (2011): A racing game in which gnomes try to reach the finish with the most gems and without having lost gems in brawls with other gnomes. C D Monika "Dilli" Dillingerová: A professor of Mathematics at Bratislava's Comenius University. Crash by Crash with Ivan Dostál (2008): Under the supervision of a grumpy operator, these bumper cars are only for the courageous. With your band of young punks, prove that you can drive better than your opponents and claim the best part of the floor for yourself. But be careful; the operator can change the floor, and you might get bumped off. Brigitte Ditt is a game designer from Rheda-Wiedenbrück, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. In 1987, she married fellow game designer Wolfgang Ditt. They have written for the Spielbox, Germany's biggest game magazine, and maintain their own board game website, Die Poeppelkiste ("The Meeple Box" or "The Pawn Box" in English). Essay: the Ditts discuss German board games. Nautilus (2002): players are building a research station at the bottom of the sea, trying to find Atlantis, recover sunken treasures, and extract raw materials. The board shows the sea floor as a grid with shades indicating the levels of depth. The three game phases include: (1) expanding the station, (2) deploying scientists, and (3) exploration (via miniature submarine). Big Points (2008): A short game with simple rules but a lot of depth. 5 differently colored playing pieces, that may be used by all players, race along a path of colored wooden disks towards their goal, racing to achieve good placement on the "scoring podium" which will enhance the points earned by collecting the disks. E Ellen Maria Ernst. Photo of Ernst and co-designer Kira Verena Samol in costume while playing Liebe & Intrige at Essen Spiel 2007. Her games: Liebe & Intrige with Kira Verena Samol (2007): You get the idea from the title of this review of the game: "Pimp My Daughters." Each player represents a family trying to marry off their three daughters. The daughters have varying levels of three characteristics: reputation, beauty, and education, all of which may increase and decrease in value during the course of the game, and which help or hinder them in their pursuit of the 14 "gentlemen" who are their potential husbands. This is basically Jane Austen: The Board Game, which means, of course, restrained courtliness in public and major backstabbing behind the scenes as you try to advance your daughters and keep the girls from other families from making a match. Spuk im Schloss (2008, "Spooky Castle" in English): The game is played in darkness using glow-in-the-dark cards. Every round, each player passes a card to his or her left, aiming to collect a set of identical glowing cards. Once someone has a set of four, the round ends and the ghosts are revealed, along with the points they confer: did you have good ghosts? Or just some ghastly ghouls? Miranda Evarts is probably the youngest entrant to this list: she was only 6 when she came up with the idea for Sleeping Queens. Though no other games have yet appeared under her name, in a 2005 article, she mentions an idea in development: '"I'm working on another card game," she said. "It's about a time portal. You have to go back in history and collect things."' Sleeping Queens (2005): The Pancake Queen, the Ladybug Queen and ten of their closest friends have fallen under a sleeping spell and it's your job to wake them up. Use strategy, quick thinking and a little luck to rouse these napping nobles from their royal slumbers. Play a knight to steal a queen or take a chance on a juggling jester. But watch out for wicked potions and dastardly dragons! The player who wakes the most queens wins. F Marsha Jean Falco of Fountain Hills, Arizona, is primarily known for inventing the game Set in 1974 while working as a population geneticist studying German Shepherd epilepsy genetic patterns. Her games: Set (1988): Each card contains 1-3 matching objects, in one of three colors, shapes, and shadings. Twelve cards are laid out, and the first person to spot a set of three collects those cards. The cards are replaced from the deck and play continues. Quiddler (1998): Obtain the highest number of points by combining two or more cards from your hand into words. The game consists of a 118 card deck containing letters from A to Z and special double-letter cards: QU, IN, ER, TH and CL. Five Crowns (1996): Rummy, with a twist. The set collection aspect of rummy is basically the same; with groups of 3 cards in either runs or denominations making a valid meld. The difference is that in each hand the number of cards increases, from 3 cards in the first hand to 13 in the last. Xactica (2002): A trick-taking card game, which challenges players' ability to estimate the outcome of playing 8 cards. You must predict the chances of being able to take the other players' cards that are laid down during each round. There is no drawing or discarding. You must predict exactly (hence the name Xactika) the number of rounds in which you will be able to take the cards played. Triology (1994): A melding of Set and rummy. Each turn players look for sets in their hand of nine cards, drawing if they cannot lay down a set. Players may also poach off of other players sets if they contribute at least two new cards. Play ends when one player runs out of cards, and the player who has the most sets at that point wins the game. Angelika Fassauer: Flowerpower with Peter Haluszka (2001): A beautiful tile-laying game where players strive to build large plots of single variety flowers. The larger the plot, the higher the score. Players plant their own gardens but also compete in a central connecting strip. Players also get the chance to plant weeds into the opponent's garden, spoiling their best laid plans. Part of the Kosmos two-player series. Trick Track Troll with Peter Haluszka (2002): A simple dice-rolling game. Roll dice to race against other trolls as you rush through an ever changing forest to collect a crystal and return home. G H Claudia Hely is a German mathematician and game designer. Interview with Hely and her co-designer Roman Pelek (in German). Their game: Santiago (2003): This game is about cultivating and watering fields. Plantation tiles are auctioned off each round, and the tiles are then placed onto the game board along with a marker that indicating how plentiful the tile’s yield will be. At game’s end, naturally only the cultivated land counts. Each plantation is counted according to type – the bigger the better. But since the ownership markers play a role as well, the same plantation can give drastically different points for different players. Maureen Hiron, "the world's foremost female games inventor" according to the Independent, and inarguably one of the most prolific, has been designing games since her 1982 abstract, Continuo. Video interview by Board Game Geek at Essen Spiel 2009. Article from The Independent about that same convention, with a brief profile of Hiron, who is herself the former bridge correspondent for that paper. A few of Hiron's many, many games: Duo (1986): card game in the Crazy Eights vein. Continuo (1982): After the initial setup of four tiles, players take turns adding tiles onto the edges of previously laid tiles, scoring points for creating aligned paths of colors. Quadwrangle (1983): a dice game played with a board with 9 columns. Each column has a counter that starts in the middle and which you attempt to move by rolling certain dice combinations. (It is a bit like playing 9 games of tug of war simultaneously.) The winner is the first to get 3 counters in their scoring area. (Reconfigured in 2001 as Cosmic Cows). 7 Ate 9 (2009): A card is laid to start the central pile, then the rest of the cards are dealt out. Players race to add the next card to the center pile; cards can only be added if they are a number with the correct difference from the most recently played card. MixUp (2006): In this two-player abstract, players try to place tiles in an arrangement of 4-in-a-row or a 2x2 square — one player goes for shapes, the other is using colors. I J K Christiane Knepel, a German game designer is, among other things, a naturopath. Her games: Muscat (2001, reimplemented as Message to the Czar in 2003): Can quickly be described as "advanced rock-paper-scissors," but is much better than this may make it sound. There are 4 different types of items in this version, which are the different kinds of street performers in the marketplaces of Muscat, trying to make their way to the Sultan's Palace. Polonaise (2001): Every player places pawns on the board. Try to get as many pawns of your opponent in between your own pawns. When a row is completed points are taken. Player with most points wins. L Victoria Lamb has designed sets and costumes for theatre, opera, musicals and film. But in gaming, she's known for her glorious, gorgeous miniatures: she paints and modifies existing miniatures, and designs her own. So it's no surprise that the game she has designed is miniature-based: Labyrintus (2008): A miniature game that combines the spectacle and craft of a miniature game with the fun and ease of play of a board game. Each player takes control of a team of 4 creatures and attempts to be the first to get through the Labyrinth. But beware, things may not always be what they seem; your progress can be thwarted by other creatures, the shifting Labyrinth and even your own tactical choices. The gorgeous prototype is still just that—a one-off prototype—but there is a 2D print and play version available. Julianne Lepp's primary career isn't designing board games: she's a Unitarian Universalist minister. She and her husband Karl designed their game together: Plunder (2004): Combines many elements of "euro-style" games: cards are laid out to form a different map-board each game. There are multiple paths to victory: you can plunder ships, explore strange coast lands, and trade goods between ports. The game combines history (actual nationalities, ports, and ships) with fantastical elements (from the dreaded kraken to the lure of mermaids). Kristin Looney is the Business Czar (Owner, CEO, President) of Looney Labs. (If you're playing Scrabble, which she never does, Kristin is worth 11 points.). A former Electronics Engineer at NASA and an IT Manager in the aerospace industry, her earliest claim to fame was winning a Rubik's Cube solving contest on the TV show "That's Incredible!" in 1981. Many of her games involve Looney Pyramids (often called "Icehouse Pyramids" after the first game in which they appeared). Her games include: Volcano (2000): A puzzle-style game in which players move "caps" around on top of a group of volcanoes, triggering eruptions which cause colored streams of lava to flow out across the playing field. The object of the game is to capture as many pieces as possible, with bonus points awarded for special combinations. Fluxx with Andrew Looney (1997): A card game in which the cards themselves determine the current rules of the game. Blockade (2001): Blockade is a roll-and-move race game played in two dimensions. Each player is assigned 2 colors in a 5x5 board, and are trying to arrange their pieces in formation first. However, as pieces arrive at their destinations, future piece movement by friend or foe is restricted. Caldera (2011): Using the same erupt-and-capture mechanism as Volcano, Caldera changes just about everything else. The players move caps to cause eruptions to capture pieces, but also have the option each turn to execute a Power Play: return a previously captured piece to the board. M Doris Matthäus: Primarily known for her illustration of smash hit euro board games like Carcassonne (2000), El Grande (1995), Tigris and Euphrates (1995), Saint Petersburg (2004), and Bohnanza (1997), she is also a designer in her own right, often working with her husband, designer Frank Nestel. Her titles include: Primordial Soup (1997): Players take charge of a tribe of amoeba as they struggle to survive. In order to help their quest, tribes will take various genetic advantages, which allow them to 'break' the rules of life. Mü & More (1995): While the headline trick-taking game, Mü, is the main attraction, this deck of custom cards comes with rules for five other games. Frank's Zoo (1999): A climbing game like Tichu. Players' scores are based on how early in the hand they get rid of all their cards. Urland (2001): With a theme of biological evolution, Urland challenges its players to compete to see whose primordial creatures will make the jump from the seas to land. Anye Mercy is both a designer and a publisher. Her company, Dancing Eggplant Games, started out as Diet Evil Games, and intended to make witty games for adults—games which turned out to be popular with children. The name changed so shop owners wouldn't have to explain why they were recommending "Evil" games to kids. Interview with Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. Her game: Fraud Squad (2002): You're an SEC investigator searching out criminal fraud amongst a handful of possibly corrupt companies. Evidence is gathered by asking other players for information in a go fish style of play. Once you've collected your evidence, state your case, then look at the case file to see if you've correctly deduced the fraud. If correct, reveal the cards from the case file and win. If you're wrong, you're fired! Andrea Meyer: Not only a designer but also a publisher, Meyer owns and operates BeWitched Spiele and is active in the international board game designer community, having co-chaired the Spiele-Autoren-Zunft (international Game Designers Guild). Videos and text interview of Meyer talking about games: at the 2008 Essen board game convention, Keynote speech for the First Annual Gayme Jam! on May, 12, 2012, and interview by Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. Her games include: Linq with Erik Nielsen (2004): Linq combines bluffing with associative gaming. Players try to find their ever changing partners by associating freely to their linq-words. An intuitive scoring mechanism shows who was best able to linq with the others in the end. Monstermaler ("Split Personality" in the US and Canada) with Friedemann Friese and Marcel-André Casasola Merkle (2006): Each player tries to draw the left half of a famous person. The first to finish yells "stop!" All players must now fold their papers down the middle and hand them to the left, leaving the right side to be drawn by another. Will your drawing be recognizable? Ad Acta (2002): A day as a civil servant: city hall tries to keep everyone working, the tax office avoids giving money to anybody and the environmental protection office just can't accept the jobs bureau's plans for new factories. Players work as fast as possible, sending messengers running for their lives—and down unofficial back-channels when necessary. Will your dossiers be put to file ("ad acta") at the right time? Be cautious: delayed files might get the shredder... Freeze with Hans-Peter Stoll (2010): four players enter the stage together and improvise a scene in a situation only they know. Each of them knows their personal rank among the actors (1-4), but no actor knows the rank of another. The actors must act out their rank within the scene so obviously that spectators can guess it. Hossa! (2000): What is a song title containing the word "Love"? Simple, isn't it? Sing it out loud. Well, okay ... A song about a relative? Well ... what about "Papa Don't Preach"? But do you know the lyrics? And what was the melody again? Perhaps the other players will help you ... Get one point for naming the song, earn more for actually being able to sing it. N O P Q R Susan McKinley Ross of IdeaDuck is a game and toy designer best known for designing the award-winning popular game Qwirkle. "I hardly play abstracts ... but my brain thinks in abstracts, and my brain thinks in color ... when game ideas come to me they almost always come abstract." Video: Ross explains her game Cirplexed! in a video from Board Game Geek. Interview: "The Art of Making and Playing Games." Qwirkle (2006): Score the most points by building lines of tiles that share a common attribute – either color or shape. Its simple rules can spawn complicated strategy. Skippity (2010): If Qwirkle can be described as a simplified Scrabble – with colors and shapes replacing letters – then Skippity might be dubbed "checkers for the Timothy Leary set". Cirplexed! (2012): Each tile features quarter circles of different colors. Each player creates her own game board by drawing and placing tiles, trying to create the most single-color circles. Color Stix (2011): a new take on pick-up sticks, one that might be called "pick up the sticks, then put them down again in a pleasing arrangement" but is thankfully better titled. S Karen Seyfarth: Thurn and Taxis, with Andreas Seyfarth (2006): build post office routes across Bavaria and surrounding regions. Plan carefully; you must add to your route on every turn. Max and Moritz, with Andreas Seyfarth (1991): "It was a (very) little card game, but it was the first box we had been the most proud of." Jennifer Schlickbernd got into designing because she's a dedicated strategy gamer: "I find more innovation in the heavier, multi-faceted strategy games that have come out lately.... they seem to hold up a lot better for me over time than the lighter family oriented games. Yes they take more time to play but I'd rather spend that time with a game that I really enjoy versus spending the same amount of time with several games where I've seen the mechanics a hundred times before (or at least it feels that way)." She is one of the ten designers of Advanced Civilization (2010): a reworking of the original Civilization. Some rules simplify and make thegame easier, while other rules like the expanded technology tree are more complex. Jodi Soares. Яussian Яails (2004): Part of Mayfair Games' series of crayon rail system games. Using erasable crayons, players design their own rail-networks across a geographically accurate map. Russian Rails' time line is orchestrated by event cards and a distance warp to accommodate the vast distances of the Soviet Union. The game begins post WWII, and players try to expand their railways before the USSR collapses. Rotundo (2005): From a review: "[T]his game could be retitled Balls! rather than the pseudo-Latin Rotundo. Indeed, I thought the game was about marble collecting, but it is about round objects of all kinds, even the most improbable: leather, cloth, fur, and platinum wire." A rummy-type game with challenging hurdles to set collection. T U V Susan Van Camp: A prolific illustrator known for her iconic red suits, Van Camp's work will be familiar to players of Magic the Gathering. Audio interview by All Games Considered at BashCon 2007 (interview starts at 8m45s). Her game is Dragon Storm (1996, revised 2011), a tabletop card based role-playing game based on Van Camp's fantasy world of Grandilar. There are two types of cards: Gamemaster cards for adventure generation and Player cards for character generation. W Joan Lerner Wendland is a game designer with a wicked sense of humor, and a game publisher through her company Blood and Cardstock Games. Interview by Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower. Her games: X-Machina (2003): a party game where youmake impossible inventions out of improbable components for unreasonable customers. Showbiz Shuffle (2002): Players collect cards for actors, directors, stunts and special effects to create movies for points. Action cards (like "drug problems" and "the big break") allow players to boost their own movies or ruin the other players'. Counting Zzzzs (2003): Who knows what dreams may come? Try to assemble a pleasant dream while your opponents try to give you nightmares or wake you up. Dim Sum Derby (2010): each player is hungry for a particular combination of dim sum. As dim sum becomes available, players try to eat the dim sum they crave. Players can rotate the dim sum spread before them, add more dim sum to the table, and perform other manipulations to achieve their culinary goals. Evil Vendetta Pie Fight (2008): In EVPF you're all evil magic-wielding nightmares from the human psyche and you hate each other's guts. Your union won't let you actually hurt each other, so the only way to settle this is to have an…Evil Vendetta Pie Fight. X Y Z

Looking for Some Waist Heat

cthuljew — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:31:38 -0800

A five-part series on the ultimate limit on technology, and how that limit could help us find other civilizations: 1 2 3 4 5 [via]

Does success spell doom for Homo sapiens?

homunculus — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 21:16:04 -0800

State of the Species: Will the unprecedented success of Homo sapiens lead to an unavoidable downfall? [Via]

Overshooting faster

doctornemo — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:34:19 -0800

This month we've gone too far, we humans on Earth. "[H]umanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. We are now operating in overdraft." A couple of days ago global civilization crossed from being in the black to up in the red, according to one view. It's a moving date: "In 1992, Earth Overshoot Day... fell on October 21. In 2002, Overshoot Day was on October 3". Is Earth Overshoot Day a useful concept, a kind of Doomsday Clock for our era? Previously on MeFi.

THE GLOAMING

homunculus — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:52:26 -0800

THE GLOAMING. [SLVimeo, possibly NSFW, via]

the dawn of a Star Trek generation

kliuless — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 05:43:20 -0800

In Praise of Leisure - "Imagine a world in which most people worked only 15 hours a week. They would be paid as much as, or even more than, they now are, because the fruits of their labor would be distributed more evenly across society. Leisure would occupy far more of their waking hours than work. It was exactly this prospect that John Maynard Keynes conjured up in a little essay published in 1930 called 'Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.' Its thesis was simple. As technological progress made possible an increase in the output of goods per hour worked, people would have to work less and less to satisfy their needs, until in the end they would have to work hardly at all... He thought this condition might be reached in about 100 years — that is, by 2030." (via)

Making money cannot be the permanent business of humanity, for the simple reason that there is nothing to do with money except spend it. And we cannot just go on spending. There will come a point when we will be satiated or disgusted or both. Or will we? ... Keynes thought that the motivational basis of capitalism was "an intense appeal to the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals." He thought that with the coming of plenty, this motivational drive would lose its social approbation; that is, that capitalism would abolish itself when its work was done. But so accustomed have we become to regarding scarcity as the norm that few of us think about what motives and principles of conduct would, or should, prevail in a world of plenty... Why, despite the surprising accuracy of his growth forecasts, are most of us, almost 100 years on, still working about as hard as we were when he wrote his futuristic essay? The answer is that a free-market economy both gives employers the power to dictate hours and terms of work and inflames our innate tendency toward competitive, status-driven consumption. Keynes was well aware of the evils of capitalism but assumed that they would wither away once their work of wealth creation was done. He did not foresee that they might become permanently entrenched, obscuring the very ideal they were initially intended to serve... The irony, however, is that now that we have at last achieved abundance, the habits bred into us by capitalism have left us incapable of enjoying it properly... If scarcity is always with us, then efficiency, the optimal use of scarce resources, and economics, the science that teaches us efficiency, will always be necessary... scarcity, as most people understand it, has diminished greatly in most societies over the last 200 years. People in rich and even medium-rich countries no longer starve to death. All this implies that the social importance of efficiency has declined, and with it the utility of economics... the problem is that a competitive, monetized economy puts us under continual pressure to want more and more. The 'scarcity' discerned by economists is increasingly an artifact of this pressure. Considered in relation to our vital needs, our state is one not of scarcity but rather of extreme abundance.

How Much Is Enough? What Is It For? "It was the shift to a market-based philosophy of growth that inflamed the insatiability of wants -- by abandoning any interest in the social outcome of growth. The market was bound by the rule of law, but there was no longer any moral, political or cultural restraint on the individual pursuit of wealth. Keynes's notion of satiety had no place. Such a system cannot work according to plan. It is both economically and morally inefficient. The Anglo-American system of the past 30 years, dominated by the financial-services industry, has been retained for the benefit of a predatory plutocracy that creams off the riches in the name of freedom and globalization. So, what intellectual, moral and political resources still exist in Western societies to reverse the onslaught of insatiability and redirect our purposes toward the good life?" Saving State Parks: The End Of Public Funding? "[A]cting one by one by one, they set into motion this dynamic... where suddenly we're not acting collaboratively or collectively as a public. We're acting individually as philanthropists to benefit the thing we're most passionate about. And suddenly we don't have a civic sphere anymore. We don't have political participation. We don't have an 'us.' We have a bunch of 'I's.' "

Beautiful Civilization

griphus — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:28:25 -0800

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization, the 2008 remake of 1994's Sid Meier's Colonization was met with some hostility over the concept at the outset. Trevor Owens and Rebbeca Mir, contributors to Play the Past, have been making a series of blog posts about the inherently problematic nature of the game. It started with "Sid Meier's Colonization: Is it offensive enough?", next was "if (!isNative()[returnfalse;]: De-People-ing Native Peopls in Sid Meier's Colonization?", then "Guns, Germs and Horses: Cultural Exchange in Sid Meier's Colonization" and, the latest, "Playing at Slavery: Modding Colonization for Authenticity" Meanwhile, if you want to experience the original Colonization, FreeCol is an open-source clone.

Player of Games

Artw — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:54:13 -0800

Iain M. Banks talks about his favorite games.

"It All Turns On Affection"

maniabug — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:46:34 -0800

Last night, author and farmer Wendell Berry delivered a powerful lecture [video; full text here includes portions not delivered verbally] to a full house on the occasion of his accepting the National Endowment of the Humanities' Jefferson Award. The famous PC holdout has appeared previously in the blue, but this lecture is not to be missed. Here is soul nourishment for the long-time Berry follower, and for the newcomer a superb introduction to one of our time's greatest intellects. An account of the lecture from Inside Higher Ed Coverage by Mark Bitman (NYTimes, I think you have to log in) Missed the point: The American Conservative.

Zone of Thought

Artw — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:29:56 -0800

Vernor Vinge is optimistic about the collapse of civilization

Thymos must have its moment

homunculus — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:40:52 -0800

Do Sports Build Character or Damage It? They foster the warrior within us, for better and for worse. [Via]

Precious Loss

infini — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:35:10 -0800

The ruins of Gede are the remains of a mysterious lost city on the Swahili Coast of Kenya, located deep within the Arabuko Sokoke forest. The mystery of Gede (Gedi) is that it does not appear in any Swahili, Portuguese, or Arab written records and present day research has not yet been able to fully account for what actually happened to the city. The inhabitants were of the Swahili, an ancient trading civilization that emerged along the eastern coasts of Africa ranging from Somalia to Mozambique. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1948 and 1958 have uncovered porcelain from China, an Indian lamp, Venetian beads, Spanish scissors, and other artefacts from all over the world, demonstrating the occupants were engaged in extensive and sophisticated international trade. Questions still remain as to what caused the downfall of Gede, but by the 17th century, the city was completely abandoned to the forest and forgotten until the 1920s. Today, a National Museum, Gede's sister cities from the period are part of the ethnography based archeological work of Dr Chapurukha M. Kusimba of Chicago's Field Museum, whose lifework has thrown light on the precolonial heritage of the Swahili peoples.

Zomia

homunculus — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:12:26 -0800

The Battle Over Zomia. "Scholars are enchanted by the notion of this anarchistic region in Asia. But how real is it?" [Previously]

YOU RULE

crunchland — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:37:09 -0800

Microsoft released Age of Empires Online last week -- a free-to-play realtime strategy game, and it's getting some pretty good press. It's technically free to play, but premium content is available for a fee. The Ars Technica review seems to indicate that the cheap bastards aren't at a huge disadvantage to the people who pony up the dough. "[T]he matching system, which developers have named Live Trueskill, takes into account whether players have access to premium content when matching for PvP (both 1v1 and 2v2, ranked and unranked). Having the best possible techs and gear may make the game more fun for some, and at a cost of $20 per premium civilization, it's not an outrageous cost. But it's never necessary." Oh, and, Windows only, naturally.

"as far as I'm concerned, Montezuma has always been a prick"

Kattullus — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:48:11 -0800

National Characters is a long, multi-part essay about how computer games deal with the concept of nations and turns it into a game mechanic. The author, Troy Goodfellow of strategy gaming blog Flash of Steel, focuses on how the fourteen indistinguishable national factions of the original Sid Meier's Civilization have been treated by different games through the years. The fourteen original civs: America Aztecs Babylonians Chinese Egyptians English French Germans Greeks Indians Mongolians Romans Russians Zulu There are also two epilogues. The first about the also rans, Arabia, Japan and Spain, nations not featured in Civ 1 that have become mainstays in historical strategy games. In his proper epilogue Nations as Characters, Goodfellow sets out some of his conclusions. Bonus: In 2008 Goodfellow explored how the Roman Empire has been portrayed in computer strategy games through the decades in special series.

Computer RTFM, Conquers Civilization.

darth_tedious — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:47:17 -0800

Computer Gets 33% Better at Playing Civilization, By Reading the Manual: An MIT experiment has apparently succeeded in getting a computer to learn from human-readable, English-language text, the computer extrapolating useful strategies and tactics from an instruction manual so effectively as to dramatically increase its victory ratio in the Sid Meier universe. Via io9.

Göbekli Tepe

Slap*Happy — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 05:18:41 -0800

"We come up with two new mysteries for every one that we solve," he [Schmidt] says. Still, he has already drawn some conclusions. "Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces," Schmidt says. "I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind." - Charles C. Mann writes about Göbekli Tepe for National Geographic.

Grouponomics

kliuless — Thu, 05 May 2011 14:56:15 -0800

The Sharing Economy (via) BONUS -Rachel Botsman explains how technology is enabling trust between strangers -Lisa Gansky talks about the future of sharing -Grouponomics -The overpayers' club: we underutilize equity arrangements at every level of our society

We have made an error, from which we need to backtrack, that can be summed up by the word 'commodification'. In the name of a false efficiency, we have struggled to cram everything from corn to cars to financial and legal relationships into the mold of widgets that can be competitively produced, objectively characterized, and then priced in fixed numeraire at arms-length by open markets. If only this could work... But it can't work. Pretending is killing us. Commodification is a reasonable framework for managing trade in corn and manufactured goods, but is an inappropriate for anything or practice whose quality is revealed over time. Commodities are appropriately priced in money and financed by debt. Goods and services that are not commodities require more complex forms of exchange than what's imagined by an introductory economics textbook. What we must 'buy and sell', most of what matters, is relationships. Managing relationships is mysterious, a difficult problem. But we know more than nothing. Just as commodities are naturally exchanged for debt and money, relationship finance naturally takes the form of equity arrangements, in which cash flows are contingent upon variable outcomes.

The Lego Set of Civilization

carsonb — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:28:54 -0800

Let's say just for a moment that you were ready to cash out. Quit your job. Sell your house. Take you and yours out of the rat race with a few hundred of your friends and family and relocate onto arable land. What tools would you need to sustain a livable—maybe even comfortable—lifestyle? Open Source Ecology suggests you start with ~2.6 million dollars and these | fifty | machines (← watch this first), collectively referred to as the Global Village Construction Set.

A civilized Grammy winner

bicyclefish — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:45:03 -0800

Baba Yetu, the much-loved theme song from Civilization IV, has won a Grammy - making it the first piece written for a video game ever to get the nod. As Civ aficionados know well, Baba Yetu - the majestic opening theme from the 2005 game Civilization IV - is an arrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Kiswahili. Composed by Christopher Tin, it was originally recorded by the Stanford Talisman, an a capella group at Stanford University that Tin himself once conducted. Tonight - six years after Civ IV was released - Baba Yetu came up a winner at the 53rd Grammy Awards, for "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)," for a remarkable new orchestration on Tin's 2009 album, Calling all Dawns (itself a winner). For all the entrenched popular love of video game music - from Super Mario to Angry Birds - it's the first time game music has won a Grammy. But if you think you know Baba Yetu, think again: Tin's new orchestration, first performed for PBS' "Video Games Live" at the Hollywood Bowl, is (as posted above the fold) something to behold. (See also: The new official video, sung by a Soweto choir. A spotty but intriguing recording - apparently from the bell section - of Tin conducting a live performance. And - previously - watch out for that prick, Montezuma.)

more of the same

kliuless — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:11:14 -0800

Life after Capitalism - Beyond capitalism, it seems, stretches a vista of... capitalism:

We cannot approach utopia in terms of material welfare because we can always imagine how increased resources could give us a more comfortable and rewarding life. Or perhaps it is better to say that from the standpoint of every previous century we have surpassed utopia, but failed to stop and properly appreciate the accomplishment. An equally important answer, of course, is that Utopia does not require merely command over nature. It requires command over self, and command over society as well. Command over self is a matter of psychology. [W]e have not achieved utopia--in spite of immense material wealth--because we have approached it as a problem of engineering, and it is in fact a problem of psychology.

With over half the world still impoverished, it'll be a while before all our material needs are met and wants satisfied (+ we can imagine quite a bit, as Han Solo sez) still the marginal utility of wealth diminishes and so but if you can ignore positional goods, conspicuous consumption and status effects, what we'll literally be left with, it seems, are our values.