Fix 11-12

In our settlers economy, we help each other through collaboration, communication and engagement. It seems that our ultimate goal is to become strong as a guild. Our individual accomplishments pale in comparison to what we can do as a group. Every time a new guildie is invited and joins, we all greet them and buff them to show how we behave to others. We communicate with them and see who they are as a member of the team, visit their island, give tips if asked. We offer help to enhance their island, production and meet their immediate needs. As a group, we help to master plan our islands, we collaborate and go on adventures together when we can, and share some of our day to day stories.. We are a worldwide group, and we offer moral support with each other. If you are having a bad day in our guild, you can log on and just say hi. There are always a large group of people that are happy to interact with you.

 

I have mentioned this before. I have found that there are many disabled people in my guild. For whatever reason, most of them are homebound and still have a need for social engagement. We all do. They enjoy the game because they can accomplish something on a daily basis, and they feel they are significant to a greater good. It would be great if we could use their problem-solving skills and desire to work as a team in crowdsourcing games. We can harness their knowledge and mental power for solving real world problems. The settlers game has realistic application possibilities for social problem solving. For one, the guild founder decided in the beginning that all members must be respectful of each other. That in itself is really important, because for some people the internet is a way to vent.and they exploit it. In the corporate world, people are much more cut-throat that they used to be and escaping to the game might help people to deal with the stressful reality of work life. I see hints of that in my guild.

 

In the last few weeks I have built an alliance with a guild member to finally level up by looting and I have received sage advice from another to improve production. I know there are professional people in my guild, and you can tell because they have production ratios memorized. That skill could be harnessed and shared for real world if say someone needed to help a village to gain optimal water and grain production. The idea of crowdsourcing according to MaGonigal would go over well in my guild. I bet they haven't heard of it even though they participate in it.

 

A few weeks ago I wrote about the crowdsourcing Philo project. http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca, used for finding problems with DNA formation. See class blog.

 

"What's Phylo all about?
The comparison of the genomes from various species is one of the most fundamental and powerful technique in molecular Biology. It helps us to decipher our DNA and identify new genes. Though it may appear to be just a game, Phylo is actually a framework for harnessing the computing power of mankind to solve the Multiple Sequence Alignment problem.

What is a Multiple Sequence Alignment?
A sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of D.N.A, R.N.A or protein to identify regions of similarity. These similarities may be consequences of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. From such an alignment, biologists may infer shared evolutionary origins, identify functionally important sites, and illustrate mutation events. More importantly, biologists can trace the source of certain genetic diseases.

The Problem
Traditionally, multiple sequence alignment algorithms use computationally complex heuristics to align the sequences. Unfortunately, the use of heuristics do not guarantee global optimization as it would be prohibitively computationally expensive to achieve an optimal alignment. This is due in part to the sheer size of the genome, which consists of roughly three billion base pairs, and the increasing computational complexity resulting from each additional sequence in an alignment.

Our Approach
Humans have evolved to recognize patterns and solve visual problems efficiently. By abstracting multiple sequence alignment to manipulating patterns consisting of coloured shapes, we have adapted the problem to benefit from human capabilities. By taking data which has already been aligned by a heuristic algorithm, we allow the user to optimize where the algorithm may have failed."

I like the Free Rice and Lost Jules games! I think that I have come up with a couple more that pertain to my personal likes. As I read chapters 11 and 12, and about all of the different games, the HIT reporting about government funding gone wrong, the folding @home game, which is like Phylo, and the different ways that wikipedia can be used to harness and gauge crowdsourcing intelligence, I thought about the Red Cross calling my home every week for us to give blood. It seems that a blood app might be useful in a gaming setting. If, whenever the Red Cross needs blood there was a game msg sent out on twitter to respond quickly, like in the groundcrew scenario, I am sure demand would be met. If points were assigned, even better! Hey a latte would be a great prize! Giving a blood is not a latte but giving blood is a great call for action. The Red Cross would be much better served this way instead of calling homes every day to find a blood donation!

 

The game I am likely to start myself is one that would save the manatees. They are killed daily, just like the key deer were years ago. If we could spot them with GPS and google map them, and transmit location, we might be able to protect them from prop damage and other human damage. I have a connection in the keys and plan to email a teen group about how to save them in this way. They are free range animals, just like buffalo and this might be a really good way to save them. There might be an application for Monarch Butterflies also. I plan on growing milkweed in my own garden this year. If we tweet it, they will come. People might be interested enough to preserve milkweed fields for the Monarchs. Sterling Beach Stare Park is a big summer habitat. The Point Place Retiree Golf Course is another one by my home. I have my huge butterfly bush at my home, and I plan to talk to the grounds keepers there about preserving milkweed. There might be a federal grant out there for monarch preservation. A game to keep track of endangered species via GPS and Google Earth overlays and provide habitat for migration would be really interesting and fun!

 

The possibilities of crowdsourcing is endless. I can see good and bad points, but for the general public and wildlife, it can be most beneficial.