Art Reflects Life: Christakis & Fowler's 'Connected' as a Boardgame...

While reading the book Connected by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, I had a lot of different ideas flashing around in my head. One that really stuck, as I looked at the social networking maps and read about how they can be applied to look at human activity from various angles as the activity of one vast superorganism, was that this sort of thing would make a great instructional game for teaching about the way our actions affect and are affected by others on a larger scale. The way irresponsible sexual behaviour led to the Rockdale County STD outbreak, the way herd instinct affected behavior in the U.K. Northern Rock Bank incident of 2007, or the way voting patterns develop and emerge as with the 2008 U.S. elections, would all make excellent subjects for a game.

There is, in fact, a precedent for this sort of game in Black Death, by Greg Porter (you can find an updated print and play version here). This game places you in the 'persona' of a virus trying to infect mid-14th century Europe, in the manner of the Black Plague. A quick look at the map-board will be instantly familiar to anyone who has read Connected or used Social Network Mapping software:

Black Death map-board (1993 Blacksburg Tactical Research Center)

There are several concepts from Connected reflected in the structure and game-play of Black Death...

TOPOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURE

The map represents Europe in the mid-14th century with the major cities (including, presumably their surrounding towns and villages) serving as Nodes and the main thoroughfares, be they overland trade route or sea lane, serving as our Ties. The whole of Europe and North Africa could be seen as a single Social Group amongst the massive Social Network that is the human race.

Some ties are actually weaker, in the example of the Black Death map-board, than others, and are marked with a negative number along the route, representing either a difficult and slow journey over mountains, sea or inhospitable terrain that might see plague carriers die before reaching their destination. On the other hand, large cities have 'sections' which give a bonus to infection, representing the poor and disease-ridden sections common in most major cities of the era.

Along with all the social connections within the group itself, we also have Weak Ties to other 'nation groups,' represented by the trade routes leading out from Moskva, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, Tunis and Reykjavik, which lead to 'The Orient,' 'Darkest Africa' and 'The Americas.' Our contagions will be coming in along the eastern routes, representing the Asian origin of many of the plagues of that era.

TRANSITIVITY

The number of outgoing and incoming connections one has is described as their Transitivity, the ability for them to spread information (or in this case, viruses). The major, popular cities in Black Death, like Constantinople or Paris, have very high Transitivity, which makes it easier for viruses to spread to them. Reykjavik's isolated nature (a very unpopular destination with a very low Transitivity), on the other hand, makes it very difficult for viruses to spread to it and tends to protect it.

Major Cities are popular targets in the game as spreading from one section to another is easy due to high connectivity. You might think of the individual sections of the city as 'close friends' in this context, a very tight little social group within the larger group, possibly even one with intimate contact, where the '+1' section might represent a friend with high risk behavior.

These connections can be lost in a number of ways by the play of special cards, changing the dynamic of the social network and the way the viruses travel around it. Wars between cities can close off trade routes which also limits the movement of plague carriers along that route as can bad weather, which keeps people at home to die in their own beds. Traders on the other hand bring new and interesting diseases with them from the Orient and a Crusade can take distant and removed infections and drag them along to concentrate in and devastate the middle east, creating new vectors for viruses to spread.

THE VIRUSES
Interestingly enough, the Viruses, themselves, are made up of two attributes that mirror the concepts found in Connected: Virulence and Mortality.

Virulence, the speed by which the virus spreads, reflects the Connected concepts of Connection and Contagion. In a manner, the Virus can bee seen as a 'sub-node' in the individual City Node which represents the individual infection vectors that pass it from person to person in the city. For example, a Virus with a high Virulence which infects humans through a common medium (like an airborne virus or one that clings to objects and spreads by touch) could be seen as a node with multiple ties/vectors to other nodes, while one with a very low Virulence (one that spreads only through sexual contact or contact with blood, for instance) would be an outlying node with only one tie that is limited by the Three Degrees rule to only infecting a few people at a time and relies on carriers moving about a lot.

Mortality represents the Connected concepts of Intrinsic Decay and Network Instability. In the game, a Virus can be very Virulent, very deadly or something in between. As killing off folks is the way to win the game (as evidenced by the scoring track which is based on 'millions served,' a grimly humorous way to represent the dead), it would seem that having the highest Mortality rate would be the way to win. But killing off your host prevents them from spreading you effectively, so high Mortality viruses can end up cutting Ties before they can travel along them to replicate themselves.

Appropriately enough, when I've played the game, high Mortality viruses tend to cluster around cities within three degrees of each other and rarely make it very far into the map as they wipe themselves out or destroy whole cities, cutting off their potential vectors of infection.

A TRANSITIVE IDEA

This sort of rules structure could easily be transplanted to other games with a focus on different types and sizes of social networks. Imagine a game that high school kids could play to show how sexual behavior has much larger ramifications than who they are sleeping with at the moment. Or perhaps political science students could benefit from seeing how 'getting out the vote' organizations really do mobilize voters in an election, with various special play cards to represent outside  influences and events (like a negative media blitz or war in the mid-east). Games typically make this sort of subject material clearer and much more interesting and are increasingly being used for teaching methods in this manner.

The lessons learned from the game structure itself can also be of use. In Black Death, some ties are harder to cross than others, something that is not represented in Connected but could add some three dimensionality to the Social Network structure. Obstructed ties would be represented in a ordinary social network by people who are well connected, but avoided (the rich but mean old miser that everyone knows in a small town and is a central influence on the monetary and political life of the town, but is avoided as much as is possible by the townsfolk).

In any case, the game is fun, educational and is also now Connected to you by Three Degrees of influence: from Greg Porter, to Me to You. So grab a copy, check it out and spread the 'love...'

The Future Is Now...

As instructed by Dr. Parry, I will endeavour to make this post as 'opinion-free' as possible, but it feels rather an odd limitation to put on a blog which is, by it's very nature, a format centered around one's opinion. It would be a reasonable assumption to write, say, a research paper in as neutral a manner as possible, but the very point of a blog is to espouse one's personal views on the subject matter at hand and so it is fairly at odds with that remit. I'll do my best, however.

In reading the three articles assigned for this week (The Public Sphere by Jurgen Habermas, Cyberdemocracy by Mark Poster and Habermas' Heritage by Pieter Boeder) we get a snapshot of a growing concern with the effect of technology upon the 'Public Sphere,' the conceptual foundation of people interacting and exchanging views and ideas as the basis of democratic principles (or more specifically liberal/progressive social welfare mass state democratic principles). Each piece is informed by the technology of the era in which it was written (1964, 1997 and 2002, respectively) but in each case, even the most modern of these seems very outdated as technology is increasing at such a rapid pace that many of the ideas presented about the deconstruction of the 'public sphere' in favor of 'public opinion' and the loss of democractic virtues through commercialization have either not come to pass, or have come to pass, but not in the way the authours envisioned.

Habermas' fear of corporatism turning democracies back into feudal states, where the corporation, whether newspaper, radio or television, controls and dispenses the information as needed to control its subjects while still appearing to provide open information exchange, has been somewhat dulled by the very nature of competition in capitalistic environments. In 1964, there were few stations on the air and Intelstat I, the first commercial communication satellite, had yet to be launched. Today, there are a massive number of channels and communication services available that allow you to see news from around the world, access information from data repositories on every continent and talk in real-time to people on the other side of the world. The ability for people to gather information and compare it with other sources to get a clearer picture of what is actually going on has never been easier and the ability to control information and prevent its dissemination is practically impossible as Wikileaks and the informaiton coming out of Egypt and Libya this year have shown.

If you hate Fox News and think they are the essence of evil mindlessly arrayed against everything good and true and never tell the truth and kill small puppies and feed them to crying children that Rupert Murdoch made cry because he feeds of the pain of innocents, then you have a plethora of other major world news sources to get your information from. If, on the other hand, you think that they are simply another news agency amongst a score of others and that they bring up some good points that are missed by other networks, then you might watch them right alongside BBC News. The number of choices available provide such a massive impediment to even modest control of any message that Habermas might have been pleasantly surprised.

In much the same way, the idea that the internet will turn people from true political activity to 'feel good' political activity that makes them feel involved without actually making any real difference has been contradicted in the last few years by the rise of grass-roots organizations with no firm leadership but a single unifying purpose. The Tea Party, for example, have changed the dynamics of US politics despite disinformation campaigns, attempts to paint them as 'fringe' or unimportant, and a quite panoptic campaign of spies and plants within their ranks to pick out, or in some cases fabricate, any little thing to discredit them as a democratic group. They are the perfect example of Poster's Cyberdemocracy in action: a virtual community that constructs an identity (a minor one that ignores sex and race) for its members based upon the back and forth exchange of ideas and are not controlled directly by any one identifiable leader or entity. They are a decentralized democratic gestalt whose existence is only possible due to the presence of cyberspace.

If anything, the new media has opened up areas of arcane political and economic thought to the common man as people of all walks of life are able to communicate complex ideas back and forth to each other. No single person could have read the 2500+ page healthcare bill and understood it, but many did take the time to read portions of it and explain them to those who had neither the time nor the byzantine political and legal knowledge to decipher it. And you can be sure that whatever side is trying to get the bill passed, the other side will have someone dogging their every footstep and reporting them online. Never before have the voters had so much access and inside knowledge on how our government works and with this knowledge comes the power to make informed decisions and punish those who abuse the system.

This is all happening today, but even these events are simply the seeds of potential for a true democracy that is enhanced, not inhibited, by the technological evolution that the human race is only on the cusp of. In fact, I think I'll write my final paper on how technologies just around the corner could create a sustainable world governing body that would be effective without interfering in the personal lives, cultures and beliefs of its constituent members. That sounds like an interesting paper...

Neighborhood Crimewatch: A Panopticon in Miniature...

Before I start, I have to say that the fact that Foucault died in 1984 is fairly humorous, considering his obsession with Big Brother type power structures. I'm sure there are even a group of Marxist conspiracy theorists who would claim that the man was intentionally offed by the 'Man' for that very reason.

Today, I'm going to look at the Panopticon structure in a very focused social environment, the typical suburban neighborhood, through the lens of the Neighborhood Watch. As a Watch Coordinator for 5 years, I have a uniquely intimate perspective with this sort of structure and how it relates to Foucault's theory of Panopticism. Where Foucault sees such structures through the lens of paranoia and repression, however, I see a fundamental good in the use of the Panopticon structure to help keep society intact, and nowhere is this more obvious than in structure of a Watch Group.

THE PANOPTICON

In the Panopticon, all the subjects can be seen and know that they can be seen but are never sure whether the are actively being observed at any particular time. The mere threat of being observed, however, instills a seed of doubt in their mind that they carry with them in their daily activity: at any moment, they might be under active observation by an unknown entity and will be caught in their wrong-doing. This may well curtail the anti-social activity all on its own without the need for 24 hour observation, saving the state time and resources.

In Foucault's example, the Panopticon is a large tower in the middle of an expansive building that has, as its outer wall, a series of cells that can be easily looked into but cannot, themselves, see into or communicate with other cells or the tower proper. In modern society, technology frees the Panopticon from the physical restraints with the presence of cameras, heat sensors, internet snoopers and other devices which allow the user to observe without being observed in much the same way. In England, for example, CCTV cameras are ubiquitous around London and, although not every camera can be monitored, they very thought that a camera might be monitoring you at any particular time can subtly modify your behavior (a nuanced form of Enframing the citizenry, but also the government, who are now seen in a different role).

The Neighborhood Watch works on a similar principle, but instead of technology, we rely on the old-fashioned human observer and a few signs that allow the criminal element to know that this is the case. In this way, a criminal who enters a neighborhood with nefarious intentions knows that at any moment a pair of eyes may be looking out a window, recognize him as 'not one of the neighborhood' and mark that information down (through description, license plate numbers, etc.) to be used later if a crime is later committed. There is also the danger of being caught flat out if the observer thinks the subject stands out in a particular way, like painters wearing brand new $100 sneakers to 'paint' a house (a real example).

THE WATCH STRUCTURE

The Watch is divided up into streets, with a Block Captain selected by each Street to serve as a focal point for the street's needs and then a Watch Coordinator is chosen from amongst them to liaise with the local police and organize activity. In this way, we can see each street serving as a sort of cell in the overall Panopticon structure of the Watch and the Block Captains serving as the random observers with the Coordinator acting as the Tower itself, disseminating information amongst the Block Captains as though they were physically active on all the streets simultaneously (which would be represented by their 'walking' the tower).

As the liaison with the police, the Coordinator as the Tower can quickly identify problems and involve the police, and other external neighborhoods/Panopticons who, when working together and sharing information, form a larger city-wide Panopticon that can more appropriately distribute scarce police resources in a focused manner to capture criminals.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING NEIGHBORLY
Criminals are not the only ones affected by the 'tyranny of a thousand eyes,' as Foucault might have called such a set-up. By actively being an observer, the observers also know that, at any point, they can become one of the observed. The social pressure that comes from that can encourage the observer to keep up their lawn, make sure their house is in order and to generally toe the behavioral line of their neighborhood. This sort of arrangement would have been anathema to Foucault, but for the rest of non-academic human society, especially in a country as large and diverse as America, this sort of order serves not as a tyranny, but a means of communal support and protection.

From the capitalist point of view, this means more freedom, not less. The freedom to live in a clean and peaceful environment. The freedom to invest in your house without worry that the neighborhood will turn into a ghetto that reduces your overall property value lower than your initial investment. The freedom to let your children play in the yard, knowing that a thousand pair of eyes (in particular, ones you know well through community bonds) will inform you not only of any dangers, but when your kids behave in an anti-social manner as well so that you can deal with it before it gets out of hand.

THE WEAKNESS OF THE WATCH STRUCTURE

Despite the inherent strength of a thousand eyes looking out for you, your family, your property and so on, the modern Watch faces a number of weaknesses that actually stem from the sort of 'freedom from structured authority' that Foucault desires. For one, the individual Panopticon has no actual authority and their word carries no official weight in these cases, and many offenses must be actively observed by the police in order to be dealt with. This means that outside of actual break-ins or other felonious acts, many laws are often broken by perpetrators who know they are being observed but also know that the observers lack the power to punish minor criminal infractions.

A good example of this involves littering and noise ordinances. Certain parts of the neighborhood might run parallel to a main thoroughfare and collect a lot of trash from non-residents who think nothing of flinging their garbage out the window onto private property so long as it keeps their personal vehicle clean. Cars with bass amplifiers cranked up to around the decibel level of rolling artillery fire go cruising through neighborhoods at all hours, disturbing people at home, waking sleeping infants during the day and both them and hard-working adults at night, and causing general physical and psychological irritation. In both cases, even a citizen video-taping the offending car in question will not give sufficient grounds for the police to ticket the individual driving unless the police are there when it happens, which is highly unlikely, as the perp is gone long before the police can arrive to witness their activity.

Add to this the damage done to community structures by technology. The neighborhoods of old, where you actively engaged the world outside your door, walking the neighborhood, chatting with your neighbors about the latest news, and so on, are changing. In the era where the computer has become the center of human attention, where everything you need can be delivered to your door, including entertainment and companionship, people are less engaged with their local community and are therefore less influenced by them. Who cares what the outside of your house looks like when you've got a computer game to play or friends to tweet with inside and who cares how the neighbors feel about it when you don't ever have to deal with them directly? As a result of negligence and apathy, houses lose property value, good families move out and the cycle of urban decay is sped up.

THE PANOPTICON: A FORCE FOR FREEDOM AS WELL AS TYRANNY
Foucault, I believe, would appreciate and approve of this disintegration of the Panoptic Structure illustrated by the weaknesses in the Watch noted above, but its removal makes life difficult and more stressful for the average person, who lives in fear of their environment and shuts themselves off even further, considering everything outside of their door as 'somebody else's problem' (especially in the face of modern media reinforcement of the 'all that matters is me' attitude). In Foucault's world, the criminal and anti-social element roams free and unimpeded, empowered by the knowledge that the resources of the 'King' are too few and too scattered to stop them.

Can the Panopticon become a tool for Tyranny? Most certainly, as the Marxists and Communists have ably shown throughout the 20th century. But in the end it is just a tool, and a useful one for ordering society. One that enframes the observer as much as it does the observed. Eliminating it would have a deleterious effect on society at large, taking us back to a darker age when mob rule and bloody suppression by force of arms were the only order of the day and 'might makes right' was the only true law. And clearly 'Do what thou wilt' does not make for good neighbors or the basis of a free society...