September 17, 2006
McGonigal Lauded for Technical Innovation
Congratulations to alternate reality gamemaker Dr. Jane McGonigal, who was recently selected as one of the Technology Review 35, a list of innovators under age 35. The Tech Review article about her is online, but the Web version lacks the magazine’s full-page photo-assemblage, done by Polly Becker and showing McGonigal as a marionette in a canister of game apparatus and circuitry.
It’s fortunate for new media that McGonigal earned a spot in the TR35, since she’s the sole representative of creative, artistic, or ludic work on this list of innovators in four categories – biotech, infotech, nanotech, and biztech – who deal with circuit layout, AIDS diagnosis, nanoparticles and neurons, among other things. (Alternate reality gaming is in the biztech category, in case you were wondering.) Some sociable sorts of innovation were recognized this year, though: Joshua Schachter, creator of del.icio.us, was actually tagged innovator of the year.
September 17th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
It seems counter-intuitive that ARGs would constitude “Biztech”, but when you think about the relationship between game theory and economic organization, you can see how meanginful and innovation is being developed by McGonigal, and others in that field. As that craft (perhaps fueled by conceptual advances in other forms of game design) is improved it will converge with grid computing and complex network theory to radically change the world. I call it Singularity-lite.