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Everyone knows that health is a critical issue these days – from discussions about costs, to the rising tide of preventable diseases… and staggering facts about rates of diabetes and heart disease in populations around the world.

Because of my work on games for children and families, I became very interested in climbing childhood obesity rates. It started pretty simply – with a couple radio pieces about school lunch nutrition and food advertising aimed at children. Soon I was reading all about how our lifestyles & choices are impacting ourselves and the planet. What I found out inspired my work on several pitches & projects while I was at EA, and I’ve continued to prioritize this focus at TGC, in my independent consulting & nonprofit work.

What’s more, that same research led me to articles, books, and films that really changed how I thought about my own eating, consumption patterns and sustainability in general. I’d always been a ‘concerned’ person who recycled… but it became clearer and clearer that something really needed to change – and that it started with me. I began looking for concrete ways to improve my health and the health of our planet. In no small way, designing games about these subjects has had a radical impact on how I behave.

That’s why I’m so thrilled to be a part of the First Lady’s new Let’s Move campaign & the Apps for Healthy Kids effort. There is a large, ongoing debate about how we can change our health by examining what we eat, how we consume, and how we spend our time. I believe that games *can* be a healthy part of that debate AND the solution… and not just after the fact when kids are already sick and suffering.

I’m really looking forward to reviewing the apps and hearing from kids and parents who worked on this project. Know an aspiring student whose interested in making games? Have a family approach to diet & exercise that you think your child can share with the world? You have until June 30 to submit an entry!

As I posted late last year, I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately thinking about the concept of “juicy feedback” – which permeates our development philosophy at TGC.

Specifically, I spent the fall examining the playful quality of feedback that we find in successful interactive systems – across applications, services, games and so on. During these talks, I explored how a focus on juicy feedback informs the fundamental design of interactive systems, and shapes the interface – creating “intelligence” in the eyes of its user.

While I conducted most of this talk cycle during travels within the UX community, I also took some time to debate it with fellow game-makers (especially in the run-up to IndieCade this past October). As a result, I began exploring how what I termed “gameism” occurs when game makers (and players) attempt to contain play and feedback mechanisms within well-perscribed design boundaries… instead of embracing the idea that these tools will proliferate outside of the game community – virally informing the design of all “everyday things”.

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Interestingly, Brian Eno touched on a similar point during a talk out here in Long Beach. Secifically, the concept of “disciplinism” as it relates to art & music. Eno believes that art is evolving as a transaction between creator and consumer – such that procedural works (like his most recent paintings and iPhone apps) are a reflection of the contemporary understanding of authorship, participation and “surrender” (what Doug always called the “abdication of authorship”). Members of his respective communities may feel otherwise…

Not surprisingly, this talk echoed the Long Now chat Eno had with Will a few years ago in SF. Similarly, Will’s keynote at IndieCade ‘09 focused on his theories about the evolution of games and procedural systems. With the exception of the beloved Russian Space Minute and a few tips for the emerging Indie scene – Will focused almost exclusively on how “the play ethic” or “play design” exists between the genres we currently understand to compose most entertainment (a network of genres that includes television, film, sports, video games, and art).

So. What draws it all together?

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Here is a series of diagrams I’ve re-created from Jesse James Garrett’s talk at UX09, which present an evolution on his original conception of what user experience design is all about.

In this talk, he examined the role of emotion in this taxonomy, citing it as the emerging component that our systems are now taking into account.

Plotting emotion alongside perception, action and cognition, he outlined the relationships between these disciplines. Then he explored where particular design activities and livelihoods live within the space of this diagram.

What’s at the center?

There are moments in life when all the signs point in a single direction – and I suppose these are the moments I live for. Reading Miyazaki’s Starting Point, thinking about “finding the feeling” of a game, understanding the promise we must make and then fulfill to our users – it’s all coming down to the same set of things.

Everywhere you look, there are exciting and examples. What’s interesting to me is not just the direct correlation of feedback from games to products and services here – but to even larger processes like advertising and marketing.

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As we move forward, knowledge of procedural design will influence so much. Understanding of large-scale, networked and distributed systems will be a leg-up in just about any business, period.

Study up, yall!

4 years this Saturday!!

Another honor: Flower won the Artistic Achievement award at this year’s BAFTA event! I was off on the honeymoon when we got the news – smiles all around. Yay!

Yes, it’s true – even though it’s taken ages for me to post about it, GDC 2010 was my favorite yet. This is my 10th GDC – which means I’m a lot older than I act most of the time. It also means that this year’s conference was full of great friends and good memories – new and old.

MONDAY: The faculty of the Annual Game Design Workshop Tutorial meet up on the 29th floor of the Hotel Intercontinental – to review our presentations and kibbitz about the workshop as is our tradition. And as Mahk was practicing the opening lecture… a beautiful DOUBLE RAINBOW appeared, surely to celebrate our 10th workshop.

TUESDAY: That’s right – the 10 year anniversary of the Game Design Workshop sessions!! Once again, we were oversubscribed .. but this time registration topped 200 attendees! Aaaand… each was treated to a special anniversary gift: a laminated, full-color set of Sissyfight cards. Mine are still new, sealed, in the box – sitting on the table by my bedside. Awww!

WEDNESDAY MORNING: I snuck away from the Workshop first thing in the am, to give a talk with Kellee on Experimental Development Processes at the Indie Game Summit. We were so thrilled that it made Gama’s list of the top 10 GDC 2010 talks) – and really valued all the feedback we got afterwards. In this talk, we covered some of the basic underpinnings of TGC daily process – answering questions about the specifics in our post-talk Q&A. Slides are here.

Based on discussions throughout the conference, I am definitely considering prepping a follow-up, nitty-gritty presentation about our decisions & stats over the course of this project for next year’s summit. This talk could go into much greater detail about the game we’ve been working on and explain the tradeoffs we made in certain key feature areas (something we Definitely could *not* talk about in March of 2010!).

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON: My second jaunt to the Indie Summit was to give a brief, understated (but I did say “TITS!”) rant about the (terrible) state of diversity in our industry. Slides for that talk are here.

More than anything – I wanted people to take away one very important message: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DIVERSITY OF YOUR TEAM/PROJECT/COMPANY. I went to great lengths to focus on scientific studies that show WHY diversity is important, and HOW the lack of it creates a self-fulfilling cycle of same-look, same-type hires.

It’s not that diversity is *only* a problem in game development, and it certainly isn’t the *only* problem we have, as an industry. But it’s an important thing to work on – and every time you hire someone, you should be trying to build a more diverse, robust and creative team. That comes from diversity of thought, experience, interests, gender, sexuality and race… just to name a few.

So quit whining about how you can’t find resumes for girl programmers and start thinking outside the box about who and why you hire!!!

THURSDAY: Thursday (morning spent recovering from fun we had at the GDC GAMMA PARTY!!) included my favorite talk of the entire conference – Brian Sharp’s wonderful discussion of Concrete Practices for Leadership. I could gush and gush about this talk (and I have, many of you heard me do so during the week) – but it’s just far better if you go and watch it yourself. Do the exercises. Seriously. Even if you are a skeptic!

GDC AWARDS: Later that night, Flower won best downloadable game at the award show! It was *fantastic* to see TGC up on stage – and to see so many of our friends & fellow developers being celebrated!!

One thing I did *not* really like about the awards was hearing so many people talk about how they had to say thanks to their families for letting them work constantly. Or making crunch jokes. Or saying things that generally made it seem like being a developer requires that you work at the expense of joy in your life. Boo.

Question: Can you imagine a GDC Awards show in which each developer who stood up to accept said something along the lines of: “I’d just like to thank my team for supporting me as I worked to stay healthy, rested and close to my loved ones as we collaborated to make this awesome game. You made this the best year of my life!”

That seems like something we could *all* clap for.

FRIDAY: Friday I walked over to the W hotel for the 2nd annual Microsoft Women in Gaming Awards. It was encouraging to see the event grow a bit, and to imagine how many talented young women these awards can reach as they gain support and recognition in the community.

It was great to celebrate our best and brightest, and the highlight of the afternoon was hearing Amy Hennig say that winning the Lifetime Achievement award – after years of working in the industry – made her think twice about maintaining such a low profile in the future. She’s could really make an impact, reach out, and inspire the next generation of female developers!

After securing a plush Companion Cube in the lunch raffel (YES!!), I busted over to the convention center to see the annual Game Design Challenge – which focused on Real Permanent Death. Oh, how we cried. And then… how we laughed! Not only did Kim sign my plushie Cube… but Jenova’s prize for winning with his “HeavenVille” proposal has yet to be drunk!! Two great souvenirs from the worlds’ best game conference!

SATURDAY: After a full, soggy day of San Francisco rain on Friday, Ben and I woke on Saturday to find the city as was beautiful as it can be. Sunny, clear – you could see for miles. Family and close friends (who were not obligated to talk at GDC or have meetings!!) gathered up on Twin Peaks to help us celebrate the beginning of our new save game.. and first bit Achievement!!

Later that night – we met up with tons of folks at the Exploratorium, where people drank, ate, mingled & played with all the crazy science stuff! Good friends Peter and Josh made sounds and images, while we greeted & chatted with well-wishers from all over the world. Truly the BEST way to celebrate… and keep the impact (flights, expecially) low. Everything we served came from within California – with the exception of some very delicious German beer. We just couldn’t resist.

Super hugs and thank you to everyone who attended our wedding, sent well wishes and made our trip to San Francisco so special and memorable. It will definitely be hard to pass up this year’s memories.. but we certainly look forward to trying.

Rock!

Kellee and I chat with Gamasutra about design, prototyping, and most importantly… love!

Also – a hint of what’s to come in my GDC rant – as we get a couple questions on Gender & Diversity in the workplace!

Let’s talk a little bit about gender — this is kind of too obvious, but it does deserve some words. There’s traditionally been a very extreme skew in the gender ratios. Looking at GDC attendance since when I started going, and looking at some studios I’ve seen, I get the impression that the ratio is becoming closer to even. Do you think a shift has taken place, and how has the industry been influenced?

KS: Hmmm, the “women in the workplace” issue, there are just so many contributing factors its really hard to narrow it down to just one. It’s not just about diversity in the workforce, it’s about wanting diversity of thought within your team.

You can achieve that by hiring a wide range of types of people, or by hiring different personalities. One of the common impressions people have of ThatGameCompany is that we’re all female, we’re all Asian, and we’re all on drugs.

RH: None of which are true.

KS: None of which are true, it’s just that the team we’ve assembled takes influences from a wide variety of places, and there is such a diverse range of thought on the team. I’m seeing more conscious effort in other companies of growing out the teams in an organic way.

RH: The other thing is, to relate it to your last question, the development of educational programs that focus on interactive entertainment and gaming allow the industry to reach out to new people. 10 years ago it wouldn’t be common for a young woman or a foreign student to be able to express their interests in gaming through a degree program, or even a class.

Now that trail has been blazed, and the opportunity is there for a lot of people. Lots of programs have started as one or two classes, and now they’re in full enrollment, they’re looking for professors. I get tons of e-mails from people looking to hire professors.

We’ve been able to broaden the scope of our recruiting efforts as an industry by exposing more people to the wonder that is video game production. It’s not easy work but it’s fascinating work, and it’s challenging. No two days are alike, and who wouldn’t want to work in that industry. We kept it a secret for a while but now the secret is out. Hopefully that means we’ll get more diverse people in the work force, and as Kellee said, more diverse games.

New post on chatroulette over on danah’s blog – which talks about some of the issues and perks surrounding rapid, random, unregulated interpersonal communication via the system of tubes we call internet. In the short time I’ve been asking people about the site, it definitely has proven to be a polarizing topic. Some love the idea – others are aghast. I think danah makes some good points about potential positives of engaging randomness… while acknowledging the creepy factor:

Anyhow, I was hemming and hawing about what to say about this and I’m still not sure what to say because, truthfully, I like the reminder of ye-olde-Internet culture. I like the fact that there are still a small percentage of folks out there looking for some amusement because they’re bored and they want to connect with randomness, folks who recognize the joy of meeting strangers in a safer space than most physical spaces where that’s possible. I realize that this creates the potential for seeing some pretty gross and/or problematic things and I certainly don’t want to dismiss that, but I’m pretty certain that teens are responding the same way that I’m responding – by clicking Next. Is that ideal? Probably not. And I’d certainly love a filter – not just for teens but for my own eyes. (Then again, I’d also like a spam filter too… Especially here on my blog. Cuz really, who of you who are reading this want to get porn ads here either?) I’m not sure that immature folks of any age (or the easily grossed out) should be on this site. But I do hope that we can create a space where teens and young adults and the rest of us can actually interact with randomness again. There’s a cost to our social isolation and I fear that we’re going to be paying it for generations to come.

For those of you who haven’t checked it out – this collection of screenshots is a pretty good indication (NSFW label – but pretty tame in comparison to what one might end up seeing).

Another interesting post on indie vs. not – this time, on the “what is art, or its value?” tip. That particular angle can be a real rat hole, and I appreciated Derek’s straightforward response.

Interesting post/hook up on GI about the promise and drive of0 new indie studio Wonderland, followed by a discussion of the emerging economic plight of mid-range independents w/r/t investor interest:

“Regardless of what is finally delivered, if you haven’t at least started trying to create something new, what is the point? … Slightly better particle effects, or slightly grittier characters, are not a good reason to throw millions of dollars and years of the developers lives at”

… “Over the next five years, I expect a lot of the mid-range games studios to either be acquired or close. If you’re in the triple-A PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 market you need to be knocking out blockbusters of incredible quality – companies like Lionhead, Naughty Dog and Blizzard will survive and prosper, whereas the teams who are not at the peak of the market will flounder.”

His comments on studios that sit between the indies and the giants of development echo those of investment bank firm IBIS Capital, which told GamesIndustry.biz this week that those businesses are at risk because they provide less return on investment with only modest sales.

“In the middle, where good-but-not-great games often lurk, the scale of blockbusters can’t be matched in terms of investment,” said IBIS’ Tim Merel. “This can have an impact on game quality, although it doesn’t have to, but definitely has an impact on marketing and distribution. The economics of this space have become increasingly challenged, so from an investment point of view what should be a lower risk investment actually becomes higher risk than a blockbuster franchise.”

“In other words, you invest less, but dollar for dollar the returns you are likely to see for the risk tend to be worse. It is driving many good independent studios out of business on a global basis, which I think is very sad for some excellent shops and for the industry generally.”

Full article (you’ll need a login) is here

Hey kids! Gamma is getting SUPER CLOSE to the total goal of donations needed to fund this year’s GDC event. Take a hike on over to their kickstarter page and donate if you haven’t already. IT IS GOING TO BE DOPE!!!

This morning I got up early and came into the office to have breakfast. We have a really nice kitchen, with a toaster oven that I have tweaked for optimal crumpet-warming. Once prepared with said crumpets and tea, I sat down to read the special report in last week’s Economist… on social networking.

It’s disarming to read about Facebook and Twitter in a weekly printed “newspaper” as if they are a strange, new phenomenon. It’s even weirder to read how they really *are* impacting how people communicate or creating business opportunities, as if it were news. It makes me feel simultaneously old (I was on Sixdegrees!) and young (DUH, it’s like, changing… stuff).

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Sitting there, I started to think about the wedding (happens a lot these days!), and the Facebook page which I need to finish up and send out this week. Which… reminded me that my mom is a bit peeved we didn’t send out paper invitations (really!) because email *might* not seem important enough to mark the occasion of our union. I’ve gotten digital communications about everything: relationship status changes, job offers and births… financial struggles, missing persons and even tragic deaths. Why, I found myself asking, would our invitations merit pulp-printed status?

I kept following this thread as I munched on my breakfast. After tons of questions about appropriate wedding gifts – we finally registered our honeymoon, which means people can help us celebrate without sending packaged goods we’ll most likely never use. We trolled BevMo’s site to source local wine – sampling it here in LA, then purchasing it from the SF store ourselves to reduce transport. And SF friends who are regulars at Mission Street Food helped us find a down-to-earth caterer who serves seasonal, local food (negotiated all menus via email).

We’ll be insuring the wedding using WedSafe. We’ve maintained a schedule, budget & to-do list on Google Docs, reminded ourselves of critical dates & appointments using shared events on Google Calendar… and even used art from a digital game creator to decorate our digital invitations. And there’s the fact that we co-located it with GDC to allow friends to join us while piggybacking on conference travel. Maximize connection, minimize impact!

Until that moment, I hadn’t really thought about how “wired” our wedding really was. But after a few months of collaboration with friends & family with these tools and techniques, I’m hard pressed to imagine doing it any other way. Without the network, it would have been a nightmare!

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Crumpet finished, tea gone – I returned to reality, washed up my dishes and stopped by my desk for a quick look at my email. At the top of my inbox was mail from Darius’ campaign page on Facebook (he’s running for the IGDA board)… linking to an IGDA Elections Candidate Review post. I started to wonder if there would be lots of comments on the site, and vowed to check back to read the other reviews.

And then I started daydreaming about how this kind of debate might help re-shape the IGDA, it’s process & mission, and improve its overall standing with developers… many who have felt disconnected for so long.

Wouldn’t *that* be something??

Hard to read this article about the state of creative development & research at Microsoft and not feel sad for friends who struggled to innovate there. And, to some extent… for those of you (still) at large game companies whose small, innovative and nimble teams are often crushed under the weight of profitible, slow, big-game politics.

There is an interesting article in last week’s Economist on the psychology of entitlement… worth a read. Essentially – the study reported that after being “primed” to feel that they were empowered (by recalling an empowering situation), people were more likely to give themselves permission to cheat, steal, lie and so on.

In both cases participants used the same one-to-nine scale employed in the first experiment. The results showed that the powerful do, indeed, behave hypocritically. They felt that others speeding because they were late warranted a 6.3 on the scale whereas speeding themselves warranted a 7.6. Low-power individuals, by contrast, saw everyone as equal. They scored themselves as 7.2 and others at 7.3—a statistically insignificant difference. In the case of tax dodging, the results were even more striking. High-power individuals felt that when others broke tax laws this rated as a 6.6 on the morality scale, but that if they did so themselves this rated as a 7.6. In this case low-power individuals were actually easier on others and harsher on themselves, with values of 7.7 and 6.8 respectively.

These results, then, suggest that the powerful do indeed behave hypocritically, condemning the transgressions of others more than they condemn their own. Which comes as no great surprise, although it is always nice to have everyday observation confirmed by systematic analysis. But another everyday observation is that powerful people who have been caught out often show little sign of contrition. It is not just that they abuse the system; they also seem to feel entitled to abuse it. To investigate this point, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky devised a third set of experiments. These were designed to disentangle the concept of power from that of entitlement. To do this, the researchers changed the way they primed people.

Half of 105 participants were asked to write about a past experience in which they had legitimately been given a role of high or low power. The others were asked to write about an experience of high or low power where they did not feel their power (or lack of it) was legitimate. All of the volunteers were then asked to rate how immoral it would be for someone to take an abandoned bicycle rather than report the bicycle to the police. They were also asked, if they were in real need of a bicycle, how likely they would be to take it themselves and not report it.

The “powerful” who had been primed to believe they were entitled to their power readily engaged in acts of moral hypocrisy. They assigned a value of 5.1 to others engaging in the theft of the bicycle while rating the action at 6.9 if they were to do it themselves. Among participants in all of the low-power states, morally hypocritical behaviour inverted itself, as it had in the case of tax fraud. “Legitimate” low-power individuals assigned others a score of 5.1 if they stole a bicycle and gave themselves a 4.3. Those primed to feel that their lack of power was illegitimate behaved similarly, assigning values of 4.7 and 4.4 respectively.

Even more interesting is the data for people who feel they were *unjustifiably empowered* (again, by recalling a situation in which they had been given power, but did not deserve it).

However, an intriguing characteristic emerged among participants in high-power states who felt they did not deserve their elevated positions. These people showed a similar tendency to that found in low-power individuals—to be harsh on themselves and less harsh on others—but the effect was considerably more dramatic. They felt that others warranted a lenient 6.0 on the morality scale when stealing a bike but assigned a highly immoral 3.9 if they took it themselves. Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky call this reversal “hypercrisy”.

Should managers (or shareholders… or voters!) work to promote such people… knowing they will be more honest? Or is it foolish to play upon their insecurities hoping for better/more supportive leadership within the ranks? It’s not clear that the justifiably empowered cheater is *hands down* worse in a leadership position… just that they may be more likely to take advantage.

What’s better: a happy but greedy grasshopper who talks the talk and walks the walk, or an sad soldier ant who may struggle to see opportunities for himself – and the team or company at large?

And what’s in the middle??

Time flies! It seems like only yesterday that we were debating the constraints for this year’s Global Game Jam jam – and yet – it’s nearly upon us!

This weekend, in a whopping 139 locations around the globe, developers and students from all disciplines will be collaborating in small groups to make their very own games! Want to participate? Register a location – or join one near you! All info on the site’s FAQ.

GOOD LUCK JAMMERS! I can’t *wait* to see what you create!!

Looking for that next great iPhone app? Check out Jason’s new site – app.itize.us – it has a really nice collection of great iPhone apps – everything from games to alarm clocks!

Even a quick look will confirm that he’s got great taste… and there is a suggestion box if you think something in your selection is worth shining a light! Word!!

Awesome news! Flower & Uncharted are leading the nominations at GDC this year!

The nominations are in for the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, with Uncharted 2, Flower, and Assassin’s Creed II dominating the nominating.

Naughty Dog could win big at the 10th annual awards show, held every year during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has been nominated for no less than seven awards, including Best Game Design, Best Visual Art, Best Technology, and the coveted Game of the Year award. In fact, the only four categories Uncharted 2 isn’t up for are the ones it doesn’t qualify for – Best Debut, Best Downloadable, Best New Social / Online, and Best Handheld.

Unsurprisingly for those of us who played thatgamecompany’s latest downloadable PlayStation 3 game, Flower comes in second in terms of number of nominations, in the running for Best Game Design, Best Audio, Best Visual Art, Best Downloadable, and Innovation.

We’re so excited for everyone whose nominated & can’t wait to see you all there!!

EEDAR guys talk about sequel sales to “casual gamers” on Wii…

“All too often the economy is blamed for the recent industry contraction. In reality, decreased sales in 2009 had more to do with a lack of innovation than economic recession. The growth of our industry now rests more on innovation than it ever has before, especially since non-traditional and casual markets consist of a larger share than in previous years. No longer can developers update a few maps, design some new weapons, add a few new characters, then throw a roman numeral at the end of the box and call it a ’sequel.’ That may work for core targeted games (Action, Shooters, and RPGs), but this strategy is not ideal for non-traditional and casual gamers.”

“Case in point: most sequels targeted to the mainstream and casual markets actually underperform in comparison to the original, which is the opposite to what has traditionally been the case for core targeted games. If you examine the Nintendo Wii and DS platforms (the current primary platform for this audience) Boom Blox outsold Boom Blox 2 (Wii); Brain Age outsold Brain Age 2 (DS); Guitar Hero III bested World Tour (Wii); The Bigs crushed The Bigs 2 (Wii); Mario & Sonic at the Olympics (Wii) is on track to outperform its Winter counterpart; Rayman Raving Rabbids (Wii) (2006) outsold its 2007 release; and lastly the original Cooking Mama (Wii, DS) (2006) has outsold all sequel versions combined.”

“EEDAR believes Nintendo understands the mindset of its consumers the best, which is why Nintendo rarely releases sequels within the same generation and, if they do, they are years apart. A good example of this is Mario Kart. Instead of releasing an annual Mario Kart title, Nintendo opts to only release one Mario Kart per hardware generation. Traditional thinking would assume that after an initial sales bump Mario Kart would simply just fade away on retail shelves—as so many others do. However, Nintendo realizes that if you can get an initial attachment rate on Mario Kart of 25% in 2008, they should be able to get the same attachment for new Wii purchasers in 2009 without having to release a sequel. To no surprise, the attachment rate for Mario Kart in 2009 was identical to that of 2008. Another example is Wii Fit. Whilst Nintendo did release a sequel to Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus (2009), the overwhelming majority of sales did not come from the stand-alone software edition, but rather the hardware/software bundle of the Wii Fit Plus. In other words, the release of the expansion, which likely had minimal development costs, spurred sales of a 20-month old game wrapped in new packaging.”

What I would love to see is the respective marketing budgets for each of these sequel pairs. My gut tells me that companies expect the brand to “carry” much more weight than it can for newer IP on the second trip out. A steady increase in marketing & PR for each release (and then, limited sequels to a 2-3 year cycle) seems like the killer 1-2 punch.

This interview with Hal Abelson (courtesy of Google Research) makes some interesting points about the future of computer science in relation to world-scale problems:

LYJ: What are your predictions for the future of computer science?

HA: Hmm, I don’t even know what the recent past of computer science is, much less the future. So if I stand on my soapbox, I must say I believe the future of computer science is information science. Cornell has a nice way of saying it – they talk about computer science inside the box and outside the box. So inside the box is the compiler stuff that makes it work, and the detailed kinds of operating systems, and all of that; and outside the box is the impact that it has on the world. I think that computer science is getting dragged by its ears into understanding that the fundamental problem is the impact that it has on the world. Faculty need to figure out that they’re working on the problems of 20 years ago. It’s funny, some people at Google kind of understand this. There are all these people who work on distributed computing, and yet there are these wonderful things you do inside Google. Folks think they understand what scalability means as a problem, and they don’t – the issues are different and bigger and you haven’t even seen the phenomenon people say they’re studying. So to me, the future of computer science really is information.

LYJ: So then, what advice would you give to students who are aspiring to go into computer science, or who are getting their PhDs now?

HA: For students going into computer science, I would push them to not run away from the social impact, because it’s really going to be about the impact of computing. I had students two years ago who did a project which is way more obvious now than it was two years ago; it turns out you can tell people are gay by analyzing their social networks. So everybody says, “Well, yeah.” But two years ago, that was a big deal. Even to most people in the world right now, that’s a big deal. Thinking about the real impact on organizations is what people here are kind of dragged into thinking about. People here don’t actually think about it very well, even though they’re very very smart… well, some people do. I mean, Google actually does have people like Jane Horvath, and Nicole Wong, who as far as I’m concerned are the very best people in the world to think about this stuff. But most people sort of don’t. I think you want to become a leader like that; you want to be technically superb, but you also need to understand the larger environment in which this is happening, and the consequences of what you’re doing – not even in a goody-goody sense, but in terms of making things that are really going to have impact.

… which I’d like to contrast with this post on capture, search and humanity… which is grounded in happenstance photos from Google’s 9-eye “street view” camera.

Both links courtesy of the lovely and talented Benjamin Smith!

Hard to believe that the new year has come so quickly – but happy to see it arrive with such promise! We took two great weeks off, travelling to visit family and then heading to SF to make wedding arrangements. As luck would have it, we found BOTH our wedding costumes, rings – and interviewed two lovely caterers. With just a few months to go, I’m actually feeling pretty on top of things. Miracles never cease!

Our trip included quality time with my folks, brother & sister in-law, as well as Lulu, Zack, and the O’Dwyer clan… whom we’ve missed very much. Many good late night conversations and mid-morning brunches were had! This, combined with scenic walks and delicious food, comprised the bulk of our vacation. It was *truly* relaxing and refreshing – and I hardly thought about my inbox over the entire break!

One of the subjects we batted about during late-night conversations was the development of personality in childhood, and the effect of birth order upon such developments. This prompted me to break out “Born to Rebel” and pick up reading where I’d left off a few years ago. The book is predominantly about birth order, but is also an homage to Charles Darwin & his exceptionally brilliant work in the subject of genetics and evolution.

The main thesis is that birth order effects a person’s beliefs/disposition. In particular, the book evaluates the adoption of radical or dissenting scientific views and relates this to the birth order of over 2,000 historically prominent scientists. The bulk of the work is statistical, but much of the information is (by necessity), drawn from biography and personal communication. So it’s quite a source for tidbits about the inner lives of famous scientists.

It seems that with marriage approaching and kids a much firmer reality, I find myself particularly taken with the book – and sympathetic to the childhood plights of the scientists it chronicles. This morning – I was reading the section on parental loss and it’s effect on childhood adoption of rebellious behavior, and found a particularly compelling passage on how early parental loss informed the adult life of Darwin himself.

Darwin’s mother Susannah died when he was 10, and in response, his father & siblings refused to speak her name or acknowledge the death. This “wall of silence” created a particularly onerous anxiety within the boy, which was amplified by an overbearing elder sister who assumed a harsh “substitute parent” disposition towards him following their mutual loss. Darwin later manifested chronic symptoms of “hyperventilation syndrome” (spells of dizziness, fainting, and hysterical weeping). He became a reclusive workaholic, obsessed with his studies and deriving peace from little else:

Darwin’s vulnerable self-esteem also influenced distinctive features of his “scientific style”. A hallmark of this style was chronic self-doubt. In particular, Darwin’s constant questioning of his own judgement made him a genius at hypothesis testing. Unfortunately, this obsession with possible error exacted a continuous emotional cost.

Darwin’s propensity toward self-doubt was a powerful asset in his work only because it was counterbalanced by another distinctive feature of his personality. In the face of opposition, Darwin was remarkably persistent. It will be recalled that he made himself “dogged” as a boy so as not to care about his sister Caroline’s reproaches. Such scolding from a mother might have been recieved differently, but coming from an elder sister it made Darwin defiant.

Properly directed, doggedness is a useful quality. In Darwin’s case, it was fundamental to his lifelong researches on evolution. Darwin himself thought particularly highly of this quality, which was his personal explanation for genius. He was especially fond of the expression “It’s dogged as does it.” “Doggedness,” Francis Darwin commented about this saying of his father’s, “Expresses his frame of mind almost better than perseverance. Perseverance seems hardly to express his almost fierce desire to force the truth to reveal itself.”

Reading this last part, I imagined Darwin locked away in his study, deep in a dialog with himself about the facts before him – unable to turn away from them for fear of missing that moment when the pattern emerged from the data… “revealing itself” under the microscope of his constant self-scrutiny and analysis. On the one hand, this is the image of a brilliant, driven scientist who will stop at nothing to find meaning and structure in the natural world. On the other… a portrait of illness and anxiety.

In this light, it’s hard to imagine bearing and raising a child. And hard not to. The miracle of a unique personality unfolding is as compelling as it is terrifying. Too interesting not to try! Best to do your best.. and let the world work out the rest…

Hrm. That’s my genes doing the thinking, I suppose?

:)

…reading these words in a game review:

Technique is taught through accidental experience; every player is sure to notice soon enough that the feet of the women should be ridden upon in order to more easily target them and avoid the spikes. One section in particular forces the player to ride a horde of women across a field of lethal spikes, while still attempting to shoot them. The choice has to be made: should I kill the women right away, or allow them to carry me across this spike field?

Happy Holidays, everyone!