Social Systems and Digital/online Worlds
Social systems sciences is a loose term for engineered environments which, if successful, attract users to participate. The advent of computers and the internet has enabled new types of social systems to take form.
There are multiple methods of measuring participation within a social system. Reach, engagement, frequency of participation – all tell something about the success of a social system.
All social systems have commonalities. One is that they become more fun and interesting as more people play and participate. Another is that with each iteration, or version, very quickly the population or interest reaches a plateau.
Indeed, the world is one large social system, split into many smaller social systems.
- Digital social systems
- Virtual worlds
- Role-playing games as social systems
When the Internet first reached the hands of the populace, people took the existing model of dungeons and dragons and created their own digital versions of the worlds once played by people in their living rooms and basements. These first text-based online role-playing games attracted people who enjoyed the social aspect of battling for gold and riches. Hundreds of new worlds sprouted up. Some of these worlds were designed more successfully than others. In terms of reach, some of these worlds supported thousands of users, while some only tens to hundreds.
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Famous quotes containing the words social, systems and/or worlds:
“Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air- conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)