This is a pet idea I came up with while being bored to unconsciousness in my Sociology 101 class (the subject material is, at least conceptually, fascinating, merely the pace of delivery and over-simplification of highly nuanced concepts is boring).
Somewhere whilst I was doodling away explanations as to the theory of socialization as an interaction process came to mind, my neighbour was playing Pokemon with another classmate somewhere else in the lecture hall. Then, deep in my hyper-nerd subconcious an idea for a game/toy emerged.
Socialization is an interactive process and social interaction is both an exchange of “social capital” and a method of communicating culture etc etc. What if we took that to a game scenario where you interact with an agent, a proxy avatar, in an isolated or at least separated setting. Then, based on the nature of that interaction watched that agent perform in a “social” setting with other agents.
It would be a highly complex wind up toy, wherein through methods of play and interaction you train your agent how to behave. Then, using that information you’ve given it it will seek to maximize the gain of social capital whilst minimizing loss.
However, other agents will be seeking to do the same thing. So a game situation presents itself. Your agent can gain favour by being dramatic, telling jokes, being flirtatious, being intelligent, charismatic, demeaning, etc. Your agent can lose favour by capitulating, being demeaned, recipricating flirts, laughing at jokes and responding to other agent’s charisma.
There also presents an interdependence phenomena where a small “knot” of agents woud likely exchange social capital in a cyclical fashion or act as a “team” to affect the social capital of others.
I’m not sure how it would all fix out but, I think, it could prove an interesting study not only in social network construction but on the idea of a strictly capitalist view of social interaction to test how closely it follows reality.
Ok, I’m an avid blog reader on my “spare” time and I happened to have stumbled upon your blog and found this entry kind of interesting. So let me get this straight we pick an agent, isolate him, and hope he doesn’t turn feral. Then we socially condition him, like an android, and form him to be the being we want him to be. Then we release him and reward/punish him based on how well he interacts with people and how well he’s able to keep within the means of his social conditioning. It sounds a bit “Brave New World”-ish to me. But then again it’s just a game right. Now in the real world, not only would this be inhumane (it sucks how this word only applies to humans, I mean it’s inhumane to stick a human’s brain with wires and measure the effects of centrifugal force, but totally alright to do it with a monkey???) and illegal but I doubt you can isolate and condition a person without any other human interaction and expect him to be able to interact properly outside of the normal settings he was used too. All you’ll have is a scared looking bunch of humans.
Left by Blank on September 29th, 2007