A Trojan Pig does/ not a Horse make. So sayeth/ “Trojan Horse Maker”

Yes that is a Haiku, but it also neatly articulates the wisdom of the Trojans. I think the folks at Monty Python picked up on the necessity of appealing to the wants/needs of the target audience, and then spoofed it with the Trojan Rabbit. Quite funny.

More to the point: serious applications of social media and social-gaming are possible, desirable, and potentially innovative. BUT, never forget the tastes of your target demographic. If your audience wants a horse, you must give them a horse before you can do anything else. Give them a rabbit first, and you may not get the desired uptake.

Virtual is not Real

It is easy to be seduced by the similarities between Virtual and Real economies. The idea of having perfect manufacturing and consumption data on which all types of economic models can be created is somewhat intoxicating i suppose to a theoretical economist. BUT, virtual economies are NOT "real"! and a guy playing Guiter Hero is not a "real" musician. and what I mean by "Real" is quite simple: I will argue that the first medium-based manifestation of an entity is the "real" version, and that when the entity becomes manifested in a second medium, it can no longer be described as "real" or even "the same as the first" manifestation. by "medium" I am referring to a "generalized platform definition". but this is not just a game of semantics. the importance is that just because 2 things appear quite similiar, it does not mean that we extrapolate on that to rationalize or validate all kinds of other observations. and we know this to be true of just about any entity we can think of..In Virual Economies, the only real laws that the site is bound by having nothing to do with money(ie. Pornography,etc). Rulers of VE's, can and do:1. revalue currencies at will2. discriminate3. subject4. create inflation, stagnation, etc5. create scarcity and excess in milliseconds6. create and destroy vast "wealth" in milliseconds
I do believe that as time goes by, Virtual Economies will have to trend towards rules, laws, and other conventions that keep "real" economies "trust worthy". but in the meantime, do not give in to a false sense of security that comes from working through "real" models that seem to apply well to virtual economies......it does make me think however, if you could limit a model to a single Virtual World/Economy, and define all of events that could occur in VW, that could not occur in Real LIfe, and you were able to assign a probability to each of these events, you could I suppose factor in the sum of these probabilities into your real model. think of it as a Virtualized Wiener Process....
the image that just popped into my head is the TV commercial that shows an office worker strolling the photocopier to get his copy. I can model that task pretty simply(basic modal model stuff). but in teh commercial, out of nowhere, at a fantastic speed, comes a fully padded football player and absolutely levels the officeworker. That is precisely the way we need to think about Virtual Economies. Until someone guarantees that Linebackers will not be loose in the offioe, we cannot trust in real world models to describe or forecast Virtual Economies

ShamWow vs Healthcare

I asked a Psychiatrist the other day 3 questions:1. How do you define reality?2. Can someone have more than one reality?3. What does it mean to have a Passion for something?
Questions 1 and 2 are relevant to other work that I do, but question 3 is relevant to the current topic in this forum
the conversation went something like this:Me: what does it mean to have a passion for something?her: Well, you could have a passion for dancing.Me: is it the act of dancing, or the way dancing makes you feel? Like dancing may make somenone feel good..Her: dancing would be your passion because it makes you feel good.Me: so its not really that you have a passion for dancing, its that you have a passion for feeling good, so dancing could just as easiliy be skiing, or surfing?Her: yes, that is correctMe: do most people just say "I have a possion fo dancing" and leave it that? or do they analyze to the core components like I do?Her: most people don't analyze.
ok. so. I just bought a ShamWow on QVC and I feel awesome. I don't really care about a yellow towel, but I got a rush from spending money with the skinny guy who wears a fake microphone. Hmmm, is there some other way I could get the same rush? maybe this is the key to Health and Wellness. How can we deliver to someone the same ShamWow feeling when they take their medication as directed? there is an anwser to this question, and its not silly. Our first mistake is to ever assume that we can reprogram people. Our first step towards success will be in understanding what motivates different sorts of people top act