philosophy

Philosophy

Tell 1000 people to build 1000 roads. If the longest road 1 person can build is 1 mile, you will never be able to travel more than 1 mile from your starting point. Tell 1000 people to build 1 road, and you may travel to a distant land.

Technology and complexity in the world is increasing at an accelerating rate assisted by its own products. It's a positive feedback mechanism. Computers improve humans' ability to sort through information and network with each other in productive ways. This in turn leads to more productive software, which increases the pace of technological improvement further. I am interested in trying to build on this potential to see if we can reach goals more quickly, easily and with better outcomes when given the right opportunity to collaborate.

These probably aren't new ideas. Everyone can see what's happening. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin dedicated years to describing the future of humanity in terms of ever increasing complexity and the meta-conscisness of the noosphere arising out of humanity's combined mind. Futurist Ray Kurzweil talks about technological evolution and the future of humanity and computing in more concrete terms. And with machines like IBM's Watson being built, it's seeming more and more realistic that some of the predictions of Ray Kurzweil about machine intelligence someday reaching and even exceeding human intelligence in the not-too-distant future could come to pass. Some people don't believe a conscious computer is possible, but even without that belief, that doesn't mean a computer can't solve problems that humans can't solve today, even with the assistance of computers. As computers continue to grow in complexity, they gain greater abilities to model the functioning of the human body. Even if you don't believe a computer can replicate the behavior of a full human body (and why would you want it to, there are probably more efficient ways to "think" and survive), it may be able to help us understand how it works to the point that we can control all of its problems. Can we eliminate disease and possibly even aging? And if a computer can understand and speak human languages and model structures as complex as the human body, could it not someday design a similar system (biological, technological, or some combination) that would bring the world another huge leap forward in social and technological evolution?

What does that have to do with iotaBuildIt? Well, I don't know that this project has so lofty a goal as to take a leap forward in human and technological evolution. But I do think that humanity needs to be given opportunities for greater networking and collaboration in more forms. Progress will come one way or another, but it can come slowly or quickly. The more examples we have of successful mass collaboration, the more we will understand about how large groups of collaborators can create something that we have not been able to in the past. And the more we understand that, the more we may be able to model more significant forms of collaboration, social or technological, that will take us closer to the point in the future where individual humans suffer less and have a better perspective on the common good.

This is just one experiment to see how such collaboration might work on a down-to-earth scale of game development. The idea is to 1) make game development accessible to the masses, and 2) invite the masses to collaborate on a single game. Then we'll see what we can accomplish. I know open source games already exist where people collaborate, but I don't think there's any game where collaboration on such a widespread scale is encouraged. Little Big Planet is close, but without the ability to integrate your ideas fully into those of others, and have complete free reign over the full range of functionality of the game, I hypothesize that the product doesn't meet its potential. It's like telling 1000 people to build 1000 roads. The longest road won't be farther from the starting point than the distance that one person can build. But if everyone is able to build on each other's roads (fully integrating their work without limitation), you can go up to 1000 times as far (certainly farther than 1 person).

So let's give this a try, and see what works.