Blogs and Social Networks
Remember, none of this content has been reviewed by anyone. It is, however, a way to see different points of view on current events.
Blogs
Mother Jones Magazine digests a couple other blogs (and links to a bunch of green ones).
Top 35 Green blogs, according to Read/Write/Web.
HuffPo Green (videos).
Climate Central is very comprehensive.
Planet Money blog tracks global economics. They authored the award winning Global Pool of Money NPR radio series on This American Life.
Rebecca Solnit is a fine and inspiring Bay Area writer.
Climateprogress.org top rated by Time Magazine
Dot Earth, NYT reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits.
Green Wombat has good coverage of energy and California
Earthfirst (not to be confused with Earthfirst!, the direct action group) recently recognized UCSC's green leadership.
earth2tech.com tracks emerging green technology, as does ecogeek.org
Energy, Food, Environment by Dustin Mulvaney, College 8 instructor.
GristMill You can comment on stories here.
by Environmental Working Group, with links to other sites/blogs
Outside Magazine blog
Worldchanging is inspiring
Social Networks
Waywire, a new social media site backed by Booker and Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, a social video site for do-gooders from the millennial generation.
Audio interview with Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, two researchers exploring social networks and how they affect our health and behavior. In their new book 'Connected,' the pair describe research into how social networks tie into obesity, smoking, voting behavior, happiness, and more.
Brilliant video explaining Web 2.0 issues such as tagging ****
Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group. As he points out, humans have been banding together to work collectively since our days of hunting mastodons. TEDtalk video.
Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/tag/environment
http://del.icio.us/tag/sustainability
http://del.icio.us/tag/sustainableliving
http://del.icio.us/tag/ecodesign
Digg http://digg.com/environment
Hugg is like Digg for the environment http://www.hugg.com/
tag cloud http://www.hugg.com/Tagadelic Tag cloud
Virtual Reality/Gaming
UCSC Game program wins award. Augmented Reality, another example.
Zygote Body 3D visualization tool.
Power play: Can utilities turn energy efficiency into fun and games? 7.12
Waking Mars is a game about gardening, botany, and ecology.
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers. I am a strong advocate of serious play. Play and school—as well as play and work—are often treated as contradictory ideas, yet it is though play—and games—that we explore, discover, and learn. The authors of Gamestorming get that. There are 83 games introduced in the book that are explained clearly and simply. You can choose the games to fit your needs and your situation.
Create or run online simulations examples and a video on how to make them.
"Phone Story" the iPhone app from Molleindustria (with some help from the Yes Lab), contains a mini-game exploring a different problem in the consumer electronics supply chain. How would you like to force children to mine precious metals, save suicidal workers from jumping to their deaths so they can labor another day, or find the cheapest way to dispose of mountains of e-waste—all while keeping productivity up so you can toss shiny trinkets to adoring consumers?
A number of new books out, including Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames
Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the "game layer," a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce. TEDtalk video
Games are invading the real world -- and the runaway popularity of Farmville and Guitar Hero is just the beginning, says Jesse Schell. TEDtalk video
Hazard Cards tests your knowledge of eco-disasters.
Representing Earth is an NYU course that investigates the potential of recreating the earth in images, VR etc.
Second Life is a virtual world that allows people to build almost anything and invite the world in to experience it. It has its own economy, and some people have built worlds that include working model ecosystems. Because it includes community, an economy, and ecosystems, it present interesting possibilities to explore the interaction between the three. Envirolink has an SL community. Interview with creator of Virtual Reality eco-village in Second Life, Etopia, and one with creator of Svarga and a video tour. Some of these virtual worlds are already having real world effects, such as this one for the rain forest. Adding technology such as the Wii to interact with rich virtual worlds give them additional potential, including training. New: Polluted Ithaca. 11/7 New CEO speaks at UCSC. Also Green design Frontier (LEED) and Archi21.
Will Wright, creator of SimCity (new version 3/12) created the mind-blowing Spore, a game for investigating evolution & complexity TEDtalk video. **** Hour long demo talk (video). 2011 talk sponsored by UCSC game design program.
2011 talk "Saving the World Through Game Design" (video) Jane McGonigal talks with Daniel Zalewski about alternate-reality gaming. From “Stories from the Near Future,” the 2008 New Yorker Conference. You can play future forecasting game, Superstruct from Institute for the Future, which has the potential to affect the real world. Earlier game project, World Without Oil
Serious Games blog environment
Green games and Second Life video
Mannahatta Project. Eric Sanderson pictures New York -- before the City. 400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta's fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife -- accurate down to the block -- when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn't get delivery. TEDtalk video.
Nuclear plant simulator game (no earthquake mode).
UCSC's Mary Flanagan has achieved international acclaim for her novel interdisciplinary games, artwork, and theoretical writing, her commitment to theory/practice research, and contributions to social justice design arenas. She is particularly interested in issues of equity and authorship in technological environments, and reworking commonly understood paradigms to provide collective strategies for social change. Her 11/1/11 talk draws primarily on her work in the Values at Play project and in her 2009 book, Critical Play (MIT Press). link
Highrise "What does citizenship mean in a transnational, globalised context? One Millionth Tower, the latest strand of the multi-media, multi- award-winning HIGHRISE project teams a group of highrise residents in Toronto with architects and animators to re-imagine their surroundings and transform their dilapidated highrise neighborhood into a vibrant, resident-led community. "Using cutting-edge open-source technology, this interactive documentary enables a 3D storytelling environment within a web browser, incorporating the magic of cinema, architecture and animation. A hyper-local story with a global resonance in its vision for a more human-friendly urban planet – and world wide web."
Gabe Zichermann is an entrepreneur and author whose work centers on gamification--and the power of games to help engage people and build strong organizations and communities. "How games make kids smarter" TEDtalk video 11/11.
Fold It solve puzzles for science.
Online game: contribute your ideas to fight global poverty!
Augmented Reality used for storytelling (TEDtalk video). UCSC example, another example.
Thoreau, at last, video game!
Let me know if you find other green "serious games" pmmckerc@ucsc.edu
