Jane McGonigal has spent several alternate lifetimes developing alternate reality games. However, in the world we know, she is the in-house game developer for the Institute for the Future, an independent research group.
She gave a keynote speech titled “The future of collective play: Fostering collaboration, network literacy and massively multiplayer problem-solving through alternate-reality games,” at the Serious Games Summit of the Game Developers Conference yesterday. This was reported at length by CNet News.com.
According to the report by Daniel Terdiman:
McGonigal spent an hour explaining how “collective intelligence,” and games designed around that concept, could be a prime component in future learning, as well as in helping governmental agencies and private organizations solve a wide range of problems.”The central problem I want to consider,” McGonigal said, “is can a computer game teach collective intelligence? I believe absolutely yes, and it’s the single most important thing we can teach as we prepare for the future.”
She explained that collective intelligence, broadly speaking, is when many people come together, using technology, to solve problems or advance knowledge. A prime example, she pointed out, is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows anyone to create and edit articles.
Other examples of collective intelligence include Yahoo Answers, Google Image Labeler, MapHub, Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk and many others.
And as both public and private organizations seek to incorporate collective intelligence to achieve their goals, McGonigal said it will be vital to create a curriculum that can teach such institutions how to leverage the concept.
I am quoting from the report at some length because it seems to me that her basic point is unusual – and one that I (and Alex Tscheulin, Christina Ferner and Ralf Appelt, among others) are also pursuing in our own ways. She seems to be suggesting that what needs to change is not the way teaching occurs, but what is taught.
I think she is right. I think that society will increasingly need people with skills that are not officially even recognised as skills yet.