In the real world of a pandemic or some future shock event, there's both what the individuals are doing, and then there's the external forces that are pushing them. The government gives them money or doesn't give them money, shuts down air travel. So how much structure do you, as the simulation runner, have to impose on what's happening over time in this kind of a, is it simulation at the right thing to call it? I call them social simulation. Sometimes we call them noture forecasting games, am or immersive scenarios. Its is like one of the cool things about working on the bleeding edge of anusonor wer no, nobody calls it the same thing yet
The future grows out of the present, but it manages to consistently surprise us. How can we get better at anticipating and preparing for what the future can be like? Jane McGonigal started out as a game designer, working on the kinds of games that represent miniature worlds with their own rules. This paradigm provides a useful way of thinking about predicting the future: imagining changes in the current world, then gaming out the consequence, allowing real people to produce unexpected emergent outcomes. We talk about the lessons learned that anyone can use to better prepare their brain for the future to come.
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Jane McGonigal received her Ph.D. in performance studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently a writer and Director of Games Research and Development at the Institute for the Future. She teaches a course at Stanford on How to Think Like a Futurist. She has developed several games, including SuperBetter, a game she designed to improve health and resilience after suffering from a concussion. Her recent book is Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything–Even Things That Seem Impossible Today.
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