The Long Zoom
Today's Sunday Times Magazine has a feature by me that serves as a nice bridge between the last book and the new one. It's a piece about Will Wright's amazing game-in-progress, Spore, that revolves around a powers-of-ten, scale-jumping theme that takes you from cell, to city, to constellation. I call that movement from scale to scale "The Long Zoom", and as I've written about here before, there's a long zoom quality to the way I tried to write The Ghost Map, with its four central protagonists: the bacterium, Snow and Whitehead, and the city itself. [By the way -- I'm aware that I incorrectly refer to the "Eames Brothers" in the opening section, so no need for any more posts/emails about it. Silly mistake...]
Anyhow, I'm very pleased with how this piece turned out, and as you might imagine, it was just a complete delight to put it together. I often think that I have one of the great jobs in the world, but visiting the Spore headquarters made me think that they actually have it better there:
It occurred to me as I wandered through the halls of the Spore offices that a troubled school system could probably do far worse than to devote an entire, say, fourth-grade year to playing Spore. The kids would get a valuable perspective on their universe; they would learn technical skills and exercise their imaginations at the same time; they would learn about the responsibility that comes from creating independent life. And no doubt you would have to drag them out of the classrooms at the end of the day. When I mentioned this to Eno, he immediately chimed in agreement. “I thought the same thing,” he said. “If you really want to reinvent education, look at games. They fold everything in: history, sociology, anthropology, chemistry — you can piggyback everything on it. “But my wife made a good point when I was talking about this the other day. She says it’s important for kids to do boring things too. Because if you can find excitement in something boring, then you’re set up for life. Whereas if you constantly need entertainment, you might have a problem, because life is full of things that aren’t entertaining. So I think I’d have three days of Spore and two days of obligatory Latin.”
A quick note to correct your characterization of "Charles & Ray Eames" as the "Eames Brothers." Ray-Bernice Alexandra Kaiser Eames was the wife of Charles Eames, not his brother.
Posted by: Kurt | October 07, 2006 at 09:01 PM
Good article. I'm looking forward to Spore, and agree about games' potential in education.
manual trackback: http://steven.vorefamily.net/2006/10/everythings-connected-if-you-look-far.html
Posted by: Steven V. in Atlanta | October 08, 2006 at 10:51 AM
Good article. I'm looking forward to Spore, and agree about games' potential in education.
manual trackback: http://steven.vorefamily.net/2006/10/everythings-connected-if-you-look-far.html
Posted by: Steven V. in Atlanta | October 08, 2006 at 11:04 AM
Huh. Fact-checking and other claim-checking seems to be off.
Not only were the Eames pair a husband-and-wife (not brothers) (perhaps most delightfully photographed here:
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9905/images/eames_11.jpg ), it's debatable that Will Wright is more "famous and critically acclaimed" than Shigeru Miyamoto of Mario and Zelda fame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Miyamoto
Posted by: peterme | October 08, 2006 at 07:59 PM
Peter, in the U.S. at least, there's no comparison between Wright and Miyamoto. They're not even in the same league. I think they're both geniuses, of course, but there have been way more profiles and critical evaluations of Wright's work in the mainstream press here... And Wright has about 100,000 more Google hits than Miyamoto has...
As for the Eames "brothers" -- I already plead guilty to that one.
Posted by: Steven Johnson | October 08, 2006 at 08:28 PM
Steven,
Wonderful piece, wonderful coingage. I think you got it right; the zoom is indeed the new perspective, the new new frame. Something to conjur with. I can't prove it, but I think "bullet time" also fits into here.
And you also encapsulate the Long Now in a way very few have managed.
Posted by: Kevin Kelly | October 09, 2006 at 11:44 AM
Hi Steven,
The Long Zoom is the best game preview I've ever read. It's also the best case I've heard from someone that this emerging entertainment medium can also be considered an art form.
On a somewhat insignifigant side note, the opening of Fight Club had an automatic pistol, not a revolver, in his mouth.
But seriously, that was an amazing article.
Posted by: andrew | October 10, 2006 at 05:54 PM
Quick question about the article - what's a "Hegelian reward", and why is a spaceship an example? Google doesn't seem to know.
There's something incredibly exciting about the idea of being given/obtaining a spaceship when they're not common. I remember reading Arthur C Clarke's The City and The Stars, and finding the whole concept of the post-apocalyptic (not really, but you understand) characters digging a fully operational spaceship from the desert sands, then taking off for the far reaches of the universe. Perhaps because it magically expands your sphere of experience exponentially.
Posted by: len | October 10, 2006 at 11:52 PM
sex,adult,porn,pic,picture,free sex picture,adult pic,porn pic,gay,teens,video,videos,Free video,online dating...
http://www.89site.com
Posted by: Susan | October 11, 2006 at 02:25 AM
Cool insight.
Michael Locker MD
Posted by: Michael Locker MD | October 11, 2006 at 08:14 AM
in the U.S. at least, there's no comparison between Wright and Miyamoto. They're not even in the same league. I think they're both geniuses, of course, but there have been way more profiles and critical evaluations of Wright's work in the mainstream press here...
Website:http://www.qqcc.info/sitemap.htm
Posted by: Christian carter | October 13, 2006 at 01:22 AM
sex,adult,porn,pic,picture,free sex picture,adult pic,porn pic,gay,teens,video,videos,Free video,online dating...www.89site.com
Posted by: Susan | October 14, 2006 at 09:33 PM
Might be interesting for some folks here:
http://www.cooperationcommons.com/cooperation-commons/remember-lateral-thinking
Keep up writing steven.
Brian O' Hanlon.
Posted by: Brian O' Hanlon | October 17, 2006 at 10:44 AM
Stephen, I would be really keen to hear your views on game authoring as opposed to game playing as an means of education - particularly in encouraging students to improve their literacy through narrative writing through making their own games of different genres. I have read your excellent book "Everything bad is good for you" and intrigued by many of the points you raise about the benefits of games (telescoping etc) I am a project manager at a small educational publisher in Oxford which has a game authoring tool in early adopter phase - called 'MissionMaker'. Students have a range of 3D assets to develop their own game construct - they control economies, character, interactions, props and settings. What are your views on this?
Posted by: Tim Price-Walker | October 26, 2006 at 12:49 PM
How does long zoom and fractals complement one another?
I am deeply interested in the fractal analysis of Jackson Pollock. So, this notion of Long Zoom gets me interested all over again...
BTW, one of my favorite books to 'read' to my 2 year old son is Zoom.
Posted by: jujuspapa | October 26, 2006 at 09:46 PM
http://www.francesexxx.com - http://www.celebritees-nues.biz - http://www.sex-shop-en-ligne.com - http://www.videos-adult.com
Posted by: france | April 02, 2007 at 12:57 AM