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About the Game of Chess

Friday, October 12th, 2007

radha-krishna_chessI want to tell you something about Games. What I want to show is that behind many Games there is a simple structure.

If we understand this structure we are more aware of “What the game is telling You” or “What Game is playing ME” or “How can I leave the Game and create my Own Game“.

Chess originated in ancient India and was known as Chatur-Anga – Meaning 4 bodied, as it was played by 4 players. The Sanskrit name Chaturanga was also used to describe the Indian army of Vedic times in which a platoon had four parts: one elephant, one chariot, three soldiers on horseback, and five foot-soldiers. The board was known as the ‘ashtapada’ (eight-square).

The ancient Game of Chess represented a very old structure, the Four with the Fifth (The Playing Board) in the Middle.

The Game was a Scenario Game. The Players could explore the Fixed Structure of the Universe (The Cycle) implemented in the Playing Board using the Roles (The Pawns) that are available in Our Reality that is controlled by the Matrix.  

 Every ancient game has a “mystical meaning“. It was not only used to play but also to learn about “the Game of Life”.

Every “old game” can be mapped to a “Standard-Model”.

The most comprehensive model is the TAROT. The Tarot is the basic framework for all the old Card Games.

It contains 3 levels where every level is an enfolding of a higher level. The Four Forces with the Five (Consciousness) in the Center are expanded into a level of 22 (Higher Arcana) and a lower level of 56 cards (Lower Arcana).

The structure of the Tarot, Chess, the TORAh, the I TJING can also be mapped to modern physics.

Will McWhinney used the Four World Views (with the Fifth in the Center) to define Game Levels. The lowest level he defined was the Analytical Game. It is a combination of Unity (Models, Rules) and Sensory (Reality). This game is about Mapping A Model into Reality or Testing a Model with Reality.

In the Mystical explanation this is the Fight (or Tension or Conflict) between Control (Model) and Desire (Reality, What we See with our Eyes).

The Analytical Game is the game of Western Civilization. It can be been seen on every level. In Society it is the fight between the State (Control, Laws) and Companies and Citizens who want to exceed the Limits of the Law. The Analytical Game is also the Game of Competition and War (Winner takes all).

If you are Played By this Game you are Out of Control. You are driven by your Ego (Desire) and/or by the Fear to lose Control.

If You are Different there are two other forces called Spirit (Mythic, I AM, Imagination) and/or Soul (Social, YOU ARE, Empathy) that are playing a Role in the Game of Your Life.

You are playing the Game of the Market (Desire/Impuls vs Soul/Emotion), the Game of Politics (Soul/Emotion vs Control) or the Game of Innovation (Spirit/Imagination vs Action/Desire).

The highest Game, The Infinite Game, is the Game of Spirit AND Soul. It is the Game to Keep on Playing by Creating New Games.

At this level You are Co-Creating with a Spirit on a higher Level (I AM WHAT I AM). It is a Game without Words and Logic. It is the Game of the Gnōsis (Knowing and Being).

When the game of Chess was transformed into a game of Two Players it changed into an Analytical Game. The aspect of Cooperation (Soul, Green) and Creation (Spirit, Yellow) were removed. The Colors Red, Blue, Yellow and Green turned into Black and White.

I know many of you think this an interesting way to explain something but Imagine (Spirit) that this was done “On Purpose” (Control).

Imagine there is a Force (Ahriman, the Fear to Lose Control, Mind, Thinking, Air, Wind) that is cooperating with the force of Desire (Lucifer, Fire) to take over.

rainbowIt does not want his Expectations of the Future to Fail. The Fear to Lose Control changed the many Games Levels into one level of Play.

It changed the Spherical Field of the Multicolor Rainbow of Existence into a 2-dimensional Black and White World of Crossing Lines, the Plane of Cause and Effect.

It even made it very difficult for people who “Feel, Care and Love (Nurses, Priests)” and/or “See the Light (Prophets, Artists)” to make a living. Imagine You are equipped with one or even two of the faculties this Force is trying to disturb.

What can you do?

I am very interested in History. All my life I have spent a lot of time to find out “what happened”. One of my searches brought me to the level of Religion.

Religion is the game of Spirit AND Soul. It is about the Experience of Beauty and the Whole. It can be changed into an Analytical Game by enforcing Control, Telling people How to Believe.

magiA part of the History of Christianity can be traced back to the Cult of Mithras  and earlier the teachings of Zoroaster . The three Magi who came to see Jezus where of the faith of Zoroaster.

Founded in Persia Zoroastrianism is the world’s oldest religion (3500 B.C). Parsis, most of whom have made Mumbai their home, are the followers of this religion. Parsis can also be found in Karachi, Pakistan, and Shiraj, in Iran. Its founder, Zoroaster, was born in Mazar-I-Sharif in Afghanistan!

To understand more about Zoroaster I ordered a book called The Teaching of Zoroaster and the Philosophy of the Parsi Religion by S.A. Kapadia. This small book is one of the most beautifull religious books I ever read. The book is about Love. It is about the Eternal Love of Man and Wife, The love for Childeren, The love for the Sick and the Poor, the Love of Mankind and The Love of Nature.

In this book the Teachings of Zoroaster are translated into 3 simple statements:

Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds.

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Why Knowledge Management Advisors are Unable to Manage Their Own Knowlegde

Thursday, October 11th, 2007

To my surprise many people are still trying to implement Knowledge-Management. I thought everybody was convinced that after almost 12 years of failing people would understand there is something wrong.

I was involved from the beginning. Knowledge Management came out of Data- and Database Management. At that time I believed the human was a Machine. I did not believe that at that time. Later I realized this was the paradigm we were using. When you use the paradigm of the Machine the only thing you can do is Program People.

When you Program people you store DATA in a database and you give them the opportunity to share this data. This can be done by search (unstructured text) or by a SQL-statement. When you do this you are simply automating a process.

Funny enough when I listen to the current generation of Knowledge Managers I hear nothing about the most important thing we did at that time called DATA-ANALYSIS. This Art has vanished for some reason. Data-analysis is the art of finding out the MEANING of what people are communicating. My favorite method to do this was NIAM.

There are special processes where Experts are involved. When you automate these processes you are building EXPERT-SYSTEMS.

This is everything there is to say about Knowledge Management.

But people that are busy with Knowledge Management don’t want to automate a process. They are different. They want to Manage the Sharing of Something called Knowledge (or Experience?).

For some reason people are unable or are not willing to share their experiences (“what they have learnt in Practice”). The first reason could be that they really don’t want to do that because their practice is their income. Many people and companies protect their experience by Law and Patents. If you really want to protect your Experience you have to Organize this process.

The last reason could be that they just don’t know what their experience is. This is very normal. It is the big problem in building Expert Systems. You need an other Expert (an Interviewer) to help the Expert to articulate the experience. This is done by Story-Telling.

Personally I think the best way to organize Experience Management is “to Let it Happen”. In the Cycle of Learning there are moments when people really need to Share (Communion). There are also moments when people need to take Control (Agency). Communion and Agency are the two factors that keep the Wheel of Innovation on the move.

Let’s change the Name of the Game of Knowledge Management and call it Collaborative Learning. Its aim is INNOVATION. This is a link to two documents (Text and Powerpoint) I wrote about this subject.

Collaborative Learning is the process of adaptation to the inside (Mental Space) or the outside environment (Physical Space, Social Space) of the learner.

To adapt to the environment the learner has to see a difference. This difference has to MOTIVATE the learner to perform a short-term (a re-flection, a re-action) or a long-term action (a plan).

A short-term action is controlled by the existing action patterns (Experience). When the environment has changed dramatically a long-term action sometimes needs a change of behavior (paradigm shift strategy).

Why is Knowledge Management failing? I give you a few possibilities.

1. People don’t see the difference. They are “Sleeping”. They are completely emerged in their environment.

2. People react and are not able to reflect. The are following their impulses. They are too busy or are already in a state of Stress (Burn-out).  When you are highly stressed your body is unable to Act anymore.

3. They know they have to adapt their behavior but are afraid to do this. They have postponed a small change and know they have arived at a turning point. They don’t want to look outside anymore and face reality. They are unable to change their Paradigm.

Now we are back to the beginning.

Why did I change my paradigm?

I changed my paradigm because after a few years I found out it was “not working”. Nobody used the Knowledge Management Systems. It was a waste of time and money. At that time we EVALUATED what we were doing. Evaluation is the step in the Collaborative Cycle where the Emotions are involved.

I know why Evaluation is not often practiced!

When People find out that something is not doing what they wanted to do they start to blame the others. They don’t except that people make mistakes and that learning from our mistakes is the essence of INNOVATION.

Most people are advised by Advisors. They are the specialists in Knowledge Management. Many of them know “it is not working” but they HOPE that someday a MIRACLE will happen. Some of them are also very afraid to lose their jobs. If this would happen a Critical Event would take place.

Funny.

Critical Events are just what you need to Change Your Paradigm.

My advice to the Customers: 

1. Automate the Processes You want to Manage. Use methods that have proven themselves. Go back in history to find them!

2. When you want to hire expensive Advisors. Ask them about their successes and their failures. But also ask them How they Manage their own Knowlegde. You will be surprised. Most of the time they don’t practice what they preach! If this is the case don’t hire them.

3. Involve them in your process of Collaborative Learning. Pay them when you Learn from them and Let them Pay You when they learn from You.

4. Facilitate and Organize Story Telling in your Company. Connect “Old” experienced Experts with young people. The Oldies love to talk about their experience. This the normal way in Society. You learn the experience from your Grandparents.

5. Build a Story Telling Game. Organize this as a Collaborative Learning Cycle. I love to share My Experience.

LINK

A Presentation About Collaborative Learning

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How the Merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis could change History (Part 3)

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

Banking is really very simple. It became very complicated when the computer was introduced. What need to be done is to move back to simplicity again. If somebody is able to do this the possibilities are tremendous. If ABN AMRO and Fortis are able to recreate a simple bank again they could Change History.

To keep this blog simple you have to believe the essence of Banking is the Movement of Cash-Flows. A cash-flow is a transaction between two actors.

Every product a Bank is offering at this moment is very complicated construction where cash-flows are manipulated.

A Customer is doing the same thing. He is constantly trying to Balance his Cash-Flows. What a Customer expects from a bank is a Trusted Advisor that is helping him to find Balance.

A Bank could become a Community of Customers who are Helping each other to Balance their Cash-Flows.

For some people it is very easy to balance. They have a nice stable job, good health, friends that are helping them, they are succesful in their business. They have accumulated money. At the other side of the spectrum we can find the opposite. People are without a job, sick, without friends or without a home.

The Cooperative Banks that were created in the beginning of the 20th century tried to find a way to balance the extremes. They got the idea that somewhere in the middle everything was compensated. They believed in Solidarity.

If you want to Keep the Balance you need to do more than "manipulating streams of money". You need to take care of the sick, you have to provide jobs and provide housing. The Cooperative Movement started to build houses (Woningbouw-vereniging), created collaborative hospitals and insurance companies. They started to educate (Het Volkshuis) and took care of the huge addiction to alcohol. The Collaborative Movement was financed by "Enlightened" Entrepreneurs who created jobs and even build complete cities.

I hope you see "the big picture". When we see a Bank as the Center of a Community we are able to connect this Center to other Centers (Healthcare, Education, Housing,…).

If we move to the right level of Coordination we are able to Balance the Whole of Centers and Create Harmony. http://hans.wyrdweb.eu/node/596

The Technical Infrastructure to do this is available. It uses the concept of Software-Services and a Kernel based on a Dialogue between these Services (The Software-Bus). The Infrastructure also contains a Monitor who is able to Balance the Centers. Cordys (www.cordys.com) is one of the Providers who has build such an Infrastructure.

A Technical Infrastructure has to be embedded in a Social and an Ecological Infrastructure. The concept of Panarchy is one of the beautifull concepts that can be of help. People have to exchange stories and create new myths. Here we can use the Concept of the Chronotope of Bahktin. http://hans.wyrdweb.eu/node/617

When you read my Blogs you will see that I have written many many blogs about this subject. Just take a tour.

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Why the Merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis will Fail (Part 2 Culture) if They Don’t Apply The Lessons Learned

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

In the first blog about the merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis I tried to show that the integration of the technical infrastructure of both banks will be very difficult. In this blog I want to talk about a much more important issue called Culture.

When the merger of ABN and AMRO was starting I was part of a management development course. The person behind the course was a very wise person. He told us what would happen the next years and he was right.

What he explained was that ABN was a very old bank that came out of a very long history. ABN was more or less the succeeder of the Dutch Trading Company VOC that was founded in 1602.

ABN was a deal-making bank. The culture of “deal-making” was very visible in everything we were doing. This was the reason why I could talk and “make a deal” with a senior manager at every level without any problem.

AMRO (Amsterdam Rotterdam Bank) has its history in the big harbors of Rotterdam and Amsterdam. It supported the people who were transporting cargo all over the world. The culture of AMRO was dominated by the Amsterdam culture. The culture of Amsterdam is one of the most difficult cultures to handle. People are always “playing games” and some of them are “dirty” or better “clever games” (practical jokes). Let’s call this culture “political” because politics is the game people of Amsterdam play the best. The political game is hidden behind the façade of the hierarchy.

The very wise person told us that the political game of the AMRO would finally kill the deal-making culture of ABN. This is what sadly enough really happened. It was the main reason why I left ABN AMRO. Many people were playing the finite game. They wanted to win and when you win there are always loosers and losses.

So to make it very clear what Fortis is buying is AMRO and not ABN. The ABN-part (deal making) was preserved in the International Network (bought by Santander) and Corporate Finance (bought by Royal Bank of Scotland). In my opinion Santander has  made the best deal!

The merger will only be a success when the Fortis-culture is able to cope with the “political (Amsterdam) culture” of ABN AMRO.

The Fortis culture is a combination of two Insurance Companies (Belgian and Dutch) and a bank VSB (Verenigde Spaarbanken) that originated out of a Cooperation (just like RABO). A insurance culture, a cooperative culture and a Belgian culture fit. At this moment Fortis can be best seen as a “Belgian Bank”.

Before the merger with ABN AMRO tried to merge with a big Belgian bank. This merger failed. The “Amsterdam culture” and the “Belgian” culture are completely opposite cultures. Belgians play the game of socializing. Everything happens behind closed doors and is arranged in restaurants. Belgian people enjoy food and wine. People in Amsterdam are also making fun but they make fun of each other.

Now let us have a look at what Fortis is really buying.

ABN and AMRO started to operate on the Retail market when the Dutch Companies around 1960 decided to pay the salary of their employees by a bank account. Before that time the employees were paid in cash. Both banks were more or less forced to move into the consumer market. Before that time both banks had really nothing to do with consumers. Consumers (Poor people) were served by the Postal Bank (now ING) and Cooperative banks like VSB.

Because “Consumer banking” was not part of the “essence” of ABN and AMRO were never (!) able to serve those customers. This is still the case. The Services of ABN AMRO are constantly valuated by their clients on the lowest level possible.

What Fortis buying is a part of ABN AMRO that is of a very different culture, operating with a very low service-level and supported by a very complicated technical infrastructure. Many customers of ABN AMRO are already very frustrated. They are not stupid and they know that the merger will not help to improve the service-level. The only thing that is stopping them is the burden of moving their accounts and the extreme low service-level of the competitors on the Dutch Market (ING is has moved to the first place in non-performing, ABN AMRO is now second).

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Why the Merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis will Fail (Part 1 Technical Infrastructure) if They Don’t Apply The Lessons Learned

Friday, October 5th, 2007

Today it is almost sure that Fortys will buy ABN AMRO. I was involved in the merger between ABN and AMRO in 1991.

AMRO was the most important competitor of ABN. It was a strange idea that we (ABN) were combined to become a “Global Bank”.

Soon I found out that we were in many fields completely different. My part of ABN was not hierarchical. We were a network. The manager at the top and the manager at the bottom were freely talking to each other. We were highly efficient and cost oriented. AMRO was completely different.

They were strictly hierarchical and were (in our eyes) extremely wasting money. The effect was visible. ABN was doing the same work with 1/3 of the amount of people.

The information I give you was not known to us. We did not know anything about them and “they” knew anything about us. Nobody informed us or could inform us. Because we (ABN) came from a very open culture we trusted our colleagues and our colleagues were telling something completely different. In their eyes AMRO was the best. They were telling their way of the truth.

In the culture of AMRO everything was a plan. They were “selling expectations”. A better system meant “We have a plan to improve our system and when we have finished the plan we will be the best”. In the culture of ABN a System was not a plan but a Working System and we were always very hesitant to over-sell. So what we were telling our colleagues was really there. It was operational and it was doing more than we told them. Both of us “believed the other”. We were operating out of our own Worldview.

ABN was a “Sensory-Bank” (Based on Facts). AMRO was “Unity-Bank” (Based on Models). At that time I did not know anything about World-Views.

After some time the big DECISION was made. The Dutch Homemarket would be supported by a combination of the AMRO-Batch Systems and the ABN Branch Systems. The International Systems would be supported by ABN-systems. The last decision was simple. ABN was an International Bank.

The big problem was that the International System proved to be a big problem. Almost nobody knew this because the International System was “almost finished”. Many of us knew that this system was a software-mess.

When you find out something in the FUTURE You always think people knew in the PAST what you know now. This is very big mistake that causes a lot of trouble.

What also caused a big problem was the difference in NUMBERS. We were 1/3 of the whole. There were much more AMRO managers and employees and everybody was give a “position”.

An example will give you an idea what NUMBERS do to you. The Educational Department of ABN aimed at IT consisted of 2 people. Everything was outsourced. The AMRO department consisted of many people. The level of a Educational Manager at ABN was low. Education was a staff activity and Staff was “not important”. What happened was that the two people of ABN just were put in a team and all their knowlegde of doing things “cheap and efficient” disappeared. The “old way of working”, “we do everyhing ourselves” just went on.

Much later we found out that “the DECISION was wrong”. The realization of “the Facts” started a new process. We started to distrust each other. Nobody was aware of the differences in culture. People started to believed “they” had plotted and “they” had given “false information”.

The “distrust” was also caused by the way we worked. The managers of ABN and AMRO kept on working in the old way. The ABN-managers quickly restored the “old boys” network. The managers of the AMRO found out that we were talking with important managers everywhere in the company. They did not like that. They wanted managers to behave like hierarchical managers.

The effect of two very different cultures created a very instable new culture. This instability started to emerge when the great work, the integration, was finished. Until that time we were very busy solving very complex puzzles nobody ever was able to solve. We did not know about these puzzles until they appeared out of the blue.

The next step THE CONVERSION was much more complicated than we thought. When we started the process of conversion we soon found out that we had to support three systems, The ABN SYSTEMS, THE AMRO SYSTEMS and the slowly growing ABN AMRO SYSTEMS.

The first problem was COMPUTER CAPACITY. The mainframes we needed were NOT AVAILABLE on the market!!! Finally IBM helped us out.

The next step was the MAPPING OF DATA. We had to compare every field to find out what ABN field could be mapped on what AMRO-field. Soon we found out that the programmers never took any time to describe the data.

The last step was CONVERTING SOFTWARE (2.300.000 Software Programs!). This time we found out we were really in trouble. Many programs were not documented and worse (!!) many load-modules were without a compile-deck and a source. We could not find out what many programs were doing. When I left the bank in 1997 many of the problems were still not solved. The Year-2000 problem was very helpfull because many software-programs had to be checked and changed.

I don’t know what the current situation is but am convinced the quality of the IT-infrastructure has not improved but has gone down. The main reason is the Outsourcing and the Low Quality of the Current Generation of Programmers. I have written about this earlier.

My advice would be to abandon one of the IT-infrastructures and only convert the Data. This wan’t be easy.

My most important advice. Don’t touch the software! I feel this will open up a box of PANDORA. I have to tell you that this is not only a problem with ABN AMRO. Every company that has developed software from the Beginning of IT History or has Merged will encounter this problem.

LINKS

Part 2 Culture

Part 3 Cash Management

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How to become Very Rich by Implementing Story Based Games (Part 4, Story Based Games)

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

A few years ago I met the most important game-designer in the world. He is the inventor of many board-games but also of very successful television-games. His games were sold all over the world. At that time he was just hired by one of the most important entertainment-firms in the word to become their Chief Creative Officer (CCO).

We started to talk and I found out that I could do what he could do. I was generating new game-concepts with ease. When I generated these concepts his comments were very clear.

“This is not possible because of the state of the IT-technology“.

What I found out first surprised me but later I found the reason. The entertainment-industry was way behind the banking industry. This is normal. Every segment in the Industry goes trough a cycle of maturity and has no idea what is happening in another segment.

I wan’t say they are re-inventing the wheel because the Entertainment-Industry has been very innovative in the area of the User-Interface (The front-end). Banks were unable to do that because their front-end was a branche-office.

Because I understood what the CCO wanted to do I was able to make a connection between two independent areas.

The other thing that surprised me was his focus on the TV. I explained him how easy it was to use a PC as a TV. I also explained him that a combination of many User-interfaces (PC, TV, and GSM) could create completely new concepts. Concepts are named Formats in the Entertainment Industry.

After some time he asked me to arrange a demo. I went to TNO. I have been working as an advisor for TNO for many years. TNO is a huge government-paid research organization. They experiment with every thing you can imagine. They were abl to demo all the upcoming innovations and he was very surprised.

I wrote a document about “what was possible” in his language. I used Cordys as an infrastructure and defined many new technical concepts like the Worldwide Media Hub, a Format Engine, a Monitor (Generating Feedback) and a model of the Emotions that could be used to stimulate Impulsive Buying Behavior (based on Frijda). I also defined a Scenario-generator based on the collected Stories. This generator could generate a completely new type of Soap.

The CCO became very interested and wanted to start a business outside his own Company. The company he was working for was not interested. He was allowed to do this (The so called Right of First Refusal). We made a complete business-plan and started to look for people that wanted to finance our business. The amount of profit we could generate was tremendous.

To my surprise nobody was interested. Our plan was too advanced. People in the Investment Business had no idea about the combination of Banking Technology and Entertainment Technology. Their idea about the World was based on the concept of the Website.They were also very hesitant because they lost a lot of money in the E-Commerce Hype.

Now almost 3 years later big worldwide media companies are finally interested and it looks like we are going into business. So if you want to make a lot of money this is your chance to jump on the bandwagon.

This is the last blog about Story Based Games.

Want to read the others?

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How to build Story Based Games

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

When you want to Play a Game with Many people you need a special infrastructure that is highly scalable. When we build the Game we used Mosaic and Cordys. This a document I wrote about Cordys.

Cordys is highly related to Mosaic. An important part of Cordys was based on the Mosaic Infrastructure. Cordys bought Mosaic from Interpay. Interpay is owned by the Dutch Banks. Interpay uses Mosaic to process an enormous amount of payments. Mosaic is able to process these payments without any problem. It never fails (non-stop) and it scales linear. This means that the limits of the amount of transactions it can process are unlimited.

Mosaic uses a cluster of PC’s. When you want to increase the amount of transactions you just add a PC. When a PC fails another PC takes over without any problem. Cordys and Mosaic are based on a software design pattern, the Software Bus or the Publish/Subscribe-Architecture. Design Patterns are a spinn-off of the Book “A Pattern Language” by Christopher Alexander.

Software and hardware are connected by a Dialogue. When a software/hardware-component is available it tells the System it is available. When another software/hardware-component wants to connect to a component it just asks the system to connect and the Bus makes the connection Just-in-time.

Multi User Games fail because the performance of the game is going down when many many (Millions) users use the game at the same time. The System we build was able to support an unlimited amount of users without any degradation in performance.

To build a game you need more than the solid foundation of a Technical Infrastructure.

 The first thing to do is to interview many people using a very special technique. When an Interview is finished you have to analyze the Life-Story. A Life-Story contains many Situations.

 Every situation is coded (Place, Actors, Event, Action, Life Line, Person …) and stored in a Database. The Situation is connected to a text or (better) to a small Video that describes or shows the Situation. It is Fun when Users are able to upload a Funny Video about a Situation. The software we used supported this. It was even possible to connect many video’s to one situation. You could award a price for the best video. To do this you need a Voting System. This was also available.

A “normal” interview contains about 40-50 situations. When you have interviewed many people the amount of connections rises exponentially. The next step is to give users the opportunity to add their own Life-Story. This will speed up the amount of connections.

When you want to move from one Situation to another Situation You have to make a Choice. The Choice tells a lot about the way you Evaluate and the way you evaluate tells something about you. Every choice you make adds data to your Dynamic Profile  and your Dynamic Profile tells a lot about your personality. It gives the System a possibility to find comparable users  and their Life-lines.

When you are a Failure (A Social) it can easily find a person that was successful and connect you to this person (Chat, Email, ..) or show you a successful Life-Line.

It is also possible to generate completely new (non-existent) Life-Lines (Scenario’s). You can also move back in a Life-Line and find a situation that you recognize or you can jump from one life-line to another (What happened at School or in the Office).

When we had finished the technical infrastructure we used the interviews of all the prior projects, analyzed them, put them in the database and started to Play. We became very exited.

What we found out is that we could define a higher level A Game by giving the users an Assigment (Find out How to get in trouble when you are at School or At Work). We could also easily recreate many well-know games by moving through the scenario-framework with a special protocol. We could even generate scenario’s for a new movie.

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About Life Stories

Monday, October 1st, 2007

When you want to build a Story-Based-Game the best way to interview is to ask people about their Life-story. Let us first have a look at the The Foley Center.  The Foley Center of Northwestern University is specialized in Life Stories.

Dan P. McAdams of the Foley Center uses Agency and Communion as the major “modalities in the existence of living forms“. These two modalities may be viewed as two thematic clusterings in life narratives, each articulating important life goals, strivings, needs, and desires”.  When I read the articles of McAdams it was not difficult to see that he was using Interpersonal Theory .

Because I was able to map Interpersonal Theory to The Theory of Will McWhinney . I was able to to open up a huge potential to litterally Play with Life Stories. Will has also mapped his World Views to Games Levels.

When you consider a Life Story as a Narrative a mapping to the Theory of Bakhtin about Chronotopes is also very helpful.

When you use the concept of the Chronotope you will see that a life-story takes Place in a named Time/Place-continuum (A House, The Office,). So not only ask When an Event took place but also Where it took place. A place is are very important factor in a life story. Many people remember the atmosphere of a Place. The House I was born felt Warm and Cosey. In my office I felt Alone.

When we had a look at the thoughts of Bahktin about Context we realized that we were really trying to describe a Situation and that other Actors in the Situation also plaid an important Role (Father, Mother, Manager, …..). So not only ask Where and When but also Who was playing an important Role.

Many people are unable to make a distinction between the Self (I AM) and the Role they are playing in a Situation. This is an important cause of conflicts. When you are a Manager you have to play the Manager and not be the Manager.

A life story is a Sequence of Situations that are always started by a CRITICAL Event. There a many ways to classify Events but a simple classification is a high point, a low point or a turning point.

In his book Paths of Change Will explains that there a many “Strategies” to change a life and of course a Life Story. Every connection of a World View to another World View can be considered a Change, a Conflict, a Game or a Dialogue.

An Event is related to the the World View Sensory. Sensory People view the world as a Causal Chain. When an Event takes place the Emotions come into play. Emotions are related to the Social World View.

According to Nico Frijda:

  • An emotion is usually caused by a person consciously or unconsciously evaluating an event as relevant to a concern that is important; the emotion is felt as positive when a concern is advanced and negative when a concern is impeded.
  •  The core of an emotion is readiness to act and the prompting of plans; an emotion gives priority for one or a few kinds of actions to which it gives a sense of urgency – so it can interrupt, or compete with, alternative mental processes or actions. Different types of readiness create different outline relationships with others
  • An emotion is usually experienced as a distinctive type of mental state, sometimes accompanied or followed by bodily changes, expressions, actions“.

Emotions Evaluate a Situation. When they Evaluate a Situation they use a Concern to Priotize. When they are able to priotize with ease or when the Event is Dangerous the Action is Unconscious. When a dangerous event takes place the Reptile Brain starts to work and the only re-actions that are possible are Fight, Flight and Freeze.

When a Major Event happens the priotization becomes Conscious. The Actor has to make a Decision. This decision is crucial for the next step (a new Situation).

When you have a look at (or feel, or listen to, ) Life Stories the Process of Decision Making is the most important factor. Socials always feel what the Others are doing or start to take care. Unities start to manage and want to restore Order. Sensories take care of Themselves (Ego) and Mythics want to restore harmony. What we see here is the Self-refererence of the Model of Will McWhinney. Inside the Emotions the World Views are again at play.

If we know how people Evaluate we are able to learn a lot about their Personality.

When we look at the Chronotopes of Bahktin we also know their Favorite Life Narrative. A Sensory uses the Chronotope of Destiny. His or her life is a sequence of events that are just happening.

A Social uses the Biography, the praise of a public figure who has accomplished something in life. When he has not accomplished anything his life is worthless. He is a total failure.

A Mythic is always searching for something (The Grale). His story is described by the Chronotope of Adventure. Deep inside the Mythic wants to find Rest and Harmony. When he finally finds Rest he feels the urge to move on. Therefore the Life of a Mythic is full of Turning Points.

When we know the Favorite Life Narrative we also know “How to Help“. A Social needs to be re-valuated. He needs a tap on the shoulder. He needs to be praised.

A Sensory has to stop to Wait and See. He needs to do something and learn from his mistakes. Somebody has to tell him that others have made the same mistake and he is able to prevent mistakes by looking (!!) at other life stories of comparable people. The most important persons could be his father or mother. They also have made mistakes and when they just tell their children frankly what they did many children would simply learn from the parents.

I hope you understand why the theory of Roger Schank is so important. His theory is able to help the Unity/Sensory-combination (Experts or Craftsman) and this combination covers about 80% of the people in Western Civilization.

Roger has now created an impressive Virtual School for Children all over the World. He is teaching children to learn a CRAFT again. He is not teaching THEORY but he is giving children the opportunity to ACT in REAL LIFE SITUATIONS. He is teaching them to become a Nurse or an Engineer. Craftmanship is HIGLHY needed in the underveloped countries.

The Virtual School is FOR FREE. It is financed by people who want to take care of the poor children in the World. The Virtual High School is using Games and it able to train Children to move to the level of the University within a very short time (max 8 years). Roger has made connections to Famous Universities in the US. They are also giving away their educational content (again Games developed by Roger Schank!) for free.

Funny enough I was unable to find anybody in the Netherlands who just wanted to try out his Virtual School. Every School and University in The Netherlands is re-inventing the Wheel. This is a Rule. The Dutch Government is spending billions to create something that is already available. This is also a Rule. If you want to know more send me an EMAIL.

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