Tech Savvy: Rachel Sterne

[ed.  A profile piece, but also interesting to hear about the different approaches New York is taking to digitally engage four million citizens.] 

by Adam Green, Vogue

In late August, while millions of New Yorkers rode out Hurricane Irene with bottled water, flashlights, and transistor radios, Rachel Sterne, the Bloomberg administration’s 28-year-old chief digital officer, was hunkered down in City Hall with a MacBook Pro, a BlackBerry, and an iPhone. As wind and rain lashed the five boroughs, Sterne was involved in a real-time experiment in how a municipal government networks with its citizens during a natural disaster. It involved coordinating the city’s use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, Crowdmap, and its own Web site and data mine to send out alerts (“Stay indoors”), provide maps with citizen-submitted photos and reports (downed trees, power outages), and answer questions spreading through the digital sphere (No, Rikers Island is not in an evacuation zone; yes, you can take your pets to shelters). “It was a really exciting case study of how technology can exponentially increase our reach during an emergency,” Sterne says. “I could totally nerd out talking about it forever.”

Mayor Bloomberg named Sterne the city’s head nerd back in January, making New York the only U.S. metropolis with a chief digital officer, joining London and inspiring Rio de Janeiro to follow suit. “Right now, our society—the way that we get information, consume culture, have relationships—is being disrupted, which is just a trendy way of saying ‘completely transformed,’ ” she says. “And if we want government to stay relevant, we need to harness the technologies that are changing the way people live.” The news of Sterne’s appointment caused an online frenzy and instantly transformed her from a well-liked, well-connected member of the New York digerati with a short but impressive résumé—founder of her own citizen-journalism site; TED Talks and Aspen Institute pundit; adjunct professor at Columbia Business School—into the face of a new era in digital governance.

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Photographed by Sebastian Kim

Evening Street, 1956 by Peter Keetman
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Zero 7

The First Kiss

The decision to kiss for the first time
is the most crucial in any love story.
It changes the relationship of two people
much more strongly
than even the final surrender;
because this kiss already has within it that surrender.

….. Emil Ludwig
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What was the Best Time and Place to Be Alive?

[ed.  Interesting thought experiment (and history lesson).]

If you could travel back in time, what would be your destination? We put the question to a group of contributors and guests, starting with the historian Patrick Dillon ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, November/December 2011

Making his own choice of the best time to have been alive, Edward Gibbon, author of “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (1776-89), didn’t have much doubt. “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” This was the second century AD, when Rome’s “five good emperors”, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, brought a peace and stability that western Europe would—in Gibbon’s view—never see again. But maybe it was an easier question then. Gibbon was white, smart and male. He could walk from the right end of one hierarchical society into another without a tremor. Nor was he sacrificing much technology to do so. Barring gunpowder and the printing press, his world and Hadrian’s were close enough to let Gibbon swap breeches for a toga and barely notice the difference.

For us, the question needs a little more thought. Anyone who dislikes pain, prefers their operations under anaesthetic, and has no wish to die of smallpox, might well choose to live now. We can balance that by awarding ourselves perpetual good health, but it’s harder to level the playing field when it comes to gender. Not many modern women, however frustrated with their lot, would choose to go back to long skirts, tight corsets and a general assumption that they are stupid. The same may apply to any European who isn’t white, and to anyone in the less affluent three-quarters of society. My children once went on a school trip to Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington’s home. I thought they were going to learn about lords; instead they were taught what it was like being a servant. Transport most of us to ancient Rome and we’ll find ourselves in a poorhouse or slave barracks. To give our question a chance, we have to assume that we can do our time travel, if not first-class, then in premium economy, switching genders if we feel like it, to land somewhere moderately comfortable.

This isn’t a question about technology, where the present will always trump the past. It’s about lifestyle and ideas, people and manners, things that ebb and flow. Armed with a passport to the good life in a time and place of our choice, not many will pass on the journey. Culture-vultures will book their seats in Shakespeare’s Globe in 1599 or the Cotton Club, Harlem, in the 1920s. Hero-worshippers will queue up to watch Michelangelo chisel stone in 1501 or Genghis Khan ride into battle in 1206. Epicures, the most prudent time-travellers, will follow Gibbon to Rome, or time their birth to dodge a call-up for the world wars and surf the Pax Americana.

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Related:

THE BEST TIME, AND PLACE, TO BE ALIVE: JAPAN, 784-1185AD

THE BEST TIME, AND PLACE, TO BE ALIVE: AMERICA, C.15,000BC

THE BEST TIME, AND PLACE, TO BE ALIVE: RUSSIA, 1870S-1900S

One Minute Physics: Schrödinger's Cat

[No cats were harmed in the making of this video.]

Schrödinger intended his thought experiment as a discussion of the EPR article-named after its authors Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen—in 1935.^[1] The EPR article highlighted the strange nature of quantum entanglement, which is a characteristic of a quantum state that is a combination of the states of two systems (for example, two subatomic particles), that once interacted but were then separated and are not each in a definite state. The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the state of the two systems undergoes collapse into a definite state when one of the systems is measured. Schrödinger and Einstein exchanged letters about Einstein's EPR article, in the course of which Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.

To further illustrate the putative incompleteness of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger describes how one could, in principle, transpose the superposition of an atom to large-scale systems of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the help of a diabolical mechanism. He proposed a scenario with a cat in a sealed box, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead (to the universe outside the box) until the box is opened. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; quite the reverse, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum.^[2] The thought experiment illustrates the counterintuitiveness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states. Intended as a critique of just the Copenhagen interpretation (the prevailing orthodoxy in 1935), the Schrödinger cat thought experiment remains a typical touchstone for all interpretations of quantum mechanics. Physicists often use the way each interpretation deals with Schrödinger's cat as a way of illustrating and comparing the particular features, strengths, and weaknesses of each interpretation.

- Wikipedia

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The Lost Art of Buying From a Butcher

by Florence Fabricant, NY Times

Patrick Martins summed it up in a single slab: pork belly. “That’s the cut that people ask for the most,” he said. “Evidently they can’t find it in their supermarkets.”

No, they cannot. And that is just one reason why Mr. Martins opened a real butcher shop on the Lower East Side last month.

He’s not the only one. Butcher shops, once a vestige, are opening in many New York neighborhoods where buying meat has often been reduced to staring down a sea of plastic-wrapped foam trays. These new stores offer much more. To make the most of them, though, a basic understanding of the butcher’s craft is essential.

Buying some pork or most other meats is not as simple or as cheap as picking out an apple. Do not tweet your friends for advice; consult the butcher.

“Here, you can have a conversation with a human being, and I can tell you that every transaction is different,” said Brent Young, one of the butchers at the Meat Hook in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This no-frills workroom in the shadowy rumble of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway goes a long way to dispel the notion that a dedicated butcher shop is an elitist venue for those times you want a prime T-bone to impress the in-laws.

How you plan to cook the meat determines the cut. And the quantity for a serving will be based how it will be trimmed, and what else you are serving. If the meat you think you want is not available or too expensive, the butcher can offer alternatives.

“We can offer cuts you never see in a supermarket,” Mr. Young said. “Cheap cuts. Customers on a budget come in asking for ideas, they want other options.” To make the most of the animals, the Meat Hook’s butchers went to France for two weeks last spring to learn how butchering is done there, and discovered little portions of succulence that could be ferreted out of parts of a steer, like the merlot steak and the oyster steak. (Remember that it was the French who popularized the hanger steak, which now is sometimes sold in better supermarkets.)

For those whose appetites stray beyond steak, a culinary adventure in the way of oxtails, marrow bones, kidneys, pig’s ears and trotters starts with the butcher, usually after a phone call in advance. You also need a butcher for some less exotic items like brisket that is fattier and juicier than the more easily found lean first cut.

“Our restaurant features nose-to-tail dining so we break down whole animals,” said Christian Pappanicholas, an owner of Cannibal, the new butcher attached to Resto, a meat-centric restaurant in Murray Hill, in Manhattan. “And if a customer wants to buy certain cuts they’ve had here to cook at home, like lamb neck, we can sell it.”

It’s a major turnaround in the way meat has been bought and sold. Some 40 or so years ago, beef was shipped to New York’s meatpacking district in the form of whole carcasses, or “rail beef.” Then the big Midwestern packing houses started shipping what was called “boxed beef,” primal cuts packed in Cryovac. Now, butchers like those at Cannibal are carving whole animals again, and not just for beef.

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Photo: Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Know your cuts:

Mass Production

The Inside Story of How Microsoft Killed Its Courier Tablet

by Jay Greene, CNET

Steve Ballmer had a dilemma. He had two groups at Microsoft pursuing competing visions for tablet computers.

One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two-screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem: It was running a modified version of Windows.

That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft's Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product--let alone one from inside Microsoft's walls--that threatened the foundation of Microsoft's flagship operating system. But Sinofsky's tablet-friendly version of Windows was more than two years away.

For Ballmer, it wasn't an easy call. Allard and Sinofsky were key executives at Microsoft, both tabbed as the next-generation brain trust. So Ballmer sought advice from the one tech visionary he's trusted more than any other over the decades--Bill Gates. Ballmer arranged for Microsoft's chairman and co-founder to meet for a few hours with Allard; his boss, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach; and two other

At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates' waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft's executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn't trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

But the device wasn't intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldn't want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft's Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allard's team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

"This is where Bill had an allergic reaction," said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

It's not hard to understand Gates' response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e-mail server software and its Outlook e-mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsoft's development process, Gates' concerns didn't bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well.

Within a few weeks, Courier was cancelled because the product didn't clearly align with the company's Windows and Office franchises, according to sources. A few months after that, both Allard and Bach announced plans to leave Microsoft, though both executives have said their decisions to move on were unrelated to the Courier cancellation.

The story of Microsoft's Courier has only been told in pieces. And nothing has been disclosed publicly about the infighting that led to the innovative device's death. This article was pieced together through interviews with 18 current and former Microsoft executives, as well as contractors and partners who worked on the project. None of the Microsoft employees, both current and former, would talk for attribution because they worried about potential repercussions. Microsoft's top spokesman, Frank Shaw, offered only a brief comment for this story and otherwise declined to make Microsoft's senior executives available.

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Concept photo of Microsoft's Courier tablet (Credit: Gizmodo)

 

Don't talk

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Current Events: Will Greece Destroy the Euro Zone?

[ed.  There might have been a bit of cautious optimism last week when news of a Euro Zone agreement (tentative) emerged, but now everything has fallen into chaos.  Even if Greece was, as it appeared, headed for a certain default, regardless of whatever austerity measures and outside controls were applied in the short term, European Central Bank and Euro Zone banking partners would have preferred an orderly default that extended over a period of several months (to unwind leverage and raise capital at higher market valuations), but that doesn't look likely now.  And, even if Prime Minister Papandreou's government is overthrown and everyone goes back to the original game plan, Greece's citizenry has been energized and the resulting turmoil could be frightening.  Then there's Italy and Portugal, not to mention our own investments in European debt.  Can you say contagion?] 

[UPDATE - and, for or a simple explanation of how contagion works, read this:]

Unlikely Happy Ending

by Veronique de Rugy, NY Times

The Greek prime minister has announced that he will seek the opinion of his people by referendum about the price they would have to pay in the form of austerity measures to get a second European Union bailout. Does this mean the end of the euro zone? Well, at this point a happy ending for the euro block seems increasingly unlikely.

There is a slight chance that a Greek default and euro exit may help preserve the monetary union, but the collapse of Greece followed by Italy could bring it down.

First, contrary to what the headlines led us to believe, the details of the agreed-upon E.U. bailout package weren’t set in stone. That means it was unlikely that this deal would actually have saved the euro anyway. Second, the referendum would give the Greek people the option to choose between more austerity measures directed by the E.U. bailout or to roll the dice and continue on the current path. At this point, it looks like they will likely reject austerity. That vote — or even the signal sent by the referendum announcement — then increases the risk of a default.

As George Mason University Professor Tyler Cowen noted a few weeks ago, a default probably means an exit from the euro zone. Also, leaving the euro zone could, in theory, benefit Greece. Cowen explains that the default may reinforce the idea that the government isn’t that committed to its banking system, which, “will lead to a continuing exodus of deposits from Greek banks. It’s not clear how the Greeks can stem that additional pressure.”

Under one scenario, pro-actively leaving the euro could alleviate the pressure and, as Cowen says, allow Greece to start “the process of Greek bank recapitalization, long and painful though it might be.”

Of course, there is a slight chance that a transparent Greek default and euro exit (followed by Portugal?) may help preserve the monetary union for those countries that remain in it. It wouldn’t be without months of tremendous market turmoil but in the end, Europe could stand on firmer grounds without the constant fear that the Euro-Agamemnon is imminent.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely. Today, Greece is still borrowing money to pay for its daily consumption; a default would mean even more austerity measures, which could lead to severe social unrest if not worse. And then we have Italy. No reason to be optimistic there (120 percent debt-to-G.D.P. ratio and a 10-year yield was up to 6.31 percent). The collapse of Greece followed by Italy could quickly bring the whole union down.

Sadly, we may soon have the answers to our questions.

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More from the BBC:

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Fishing in Amazon
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Taka Hawk in the Sky
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We Need a Reality Bias

Stop Forcing Journalists to Conceal Their Views From the Public

by Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic

Brooklyn-based journalist Caitlin Curran was fired from her part-time gig at WNYC, the innovative public radio station, because her boss found out that she attended an Occupy Wall Street protest. She's written about her termination at Gawker, where she wondered whether experiences like hers will "dissuade people who have jobs they want to keep from expressing their opinions." It's a disturbing possibility, but reading her story, I couldn't help but focus on a disturbing fact.

As regular readers know, Curran and her boyfriend, neither of whom I know, made a sign that displayed an excerpted phrase from an article I wrote. While Curran held it aloft in Times Square, someone snapped a photograph; soon afterward the image went viral. "I thought all of this could be fodder for an interesting segment on The Takeaway -- a morning news program co-produced by WNYC Radio and Public Radio International -- for which I had been working as a freelance web producer roughly 20 hours per week for the past seven months," Curran wrote. "I pitched the idea to producers on the show, in an e-mail. The next day, The Takeaway's general manager fired me over the phone, effective immediately. He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a 'teaching moment' for me in my career as a journalist."

Presuming the accuracy of this account, her boss is wrong.

For too long, managers at American newspapers and public radio stations have clung to this confused, corrosive notion of journalistic ethics -- that it is always a breach to participate in a protest or be caught expressing a controversial opinion. They talk about preventing "the perception of bias," though the model of journalism they champion is often perceived as biased, and almost never because of the activities staffers participate in during their leisure hours. There is a general argument about why this allergy to civic participation is flawed, and a specific argument about why it's wrong in this case. I'll lay them out in turn.

THE CASE AGAINST THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE

To borrow a phrase, every editor who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that propagating the myth of "objective journalism" is indefensible. A newspaper or radio program may try to hide or obscure the fact that the people responsible for its content have opinions, convictions, and biases. But it is impossible to function as a journalist without making subjective judgment calls about newsworthiness, relevance and emphasis, or covering issues about which you have an opinion. Pretending otherwise requires willfully misleading the public.

An ethical journalist ought to be accurate. She ought to be fair. Her aim ought to be reporting the truth or earnestly advancing a logically sound argument, rather than enriching herself or bolstering her reputation or shilling for her partisan or ideological allies. It is perfectly legitimate for a journalistic organization to decide that it is going to publish or broadcast work that presents verifiable facts as neutrally as possible, and avoid permitting its employees to inject statements of opinion into their professional output. If that's what you mean by "journalistic objectivity," you've not run afoul of my views.

What is objectionable is the View from Nowhere, a term popularized in this context by Jay Rosen, a professor at NYU journalism school, my alma mater. "In pro journalism, American style, the View from Nowhere is a bid for trust that advertises the viewlessness of the news producer," he writes. "Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position 'impartial.' Second, it's a means of defense against a style of criticism that is fully anticipated: charges of bias originating in partisan politics and the two-party system. Third: it's an attempt to secure a kind of universal legitimacy that is implicitly denied to those who stake out positions or betray a point of view. American journalists have almost a lust for the View from Nowhere because they think it has more authority than any other possible stance."

Journalistic outfits make a grave mistake by building their authority on the foundation of the View From Nowhere. I'll explain why as soon as Rosen makes one more point. "What authority there is in the position of viewlessness is unearned -- like the snooty guy who, when challenged, says, 'Madam, I have a PhD,'" he writes. "Real authority starts with reporting. Knowing your stuff, mastering your beat, being right on the facts, digging under the surface of things, calling around to find out what happened, verifying what you heard. 'I'm there, you're not, let me tell you about it.' Illuminating a murky situation because you understand it better than almost anyone. Doing the work! Having a track record, a reputation for reliability is part of it, too. But that comes from doing the work."

That ought to be the pitch that newspapers and public radio stations make to their audience. It might go something like this: "Yes, the field of journalism attracts more liberals than conservatives, more Occupy Wall Street participants than Tea Party ralliers, more urban dwellers than rural Americans, more college graduates than people without degrees, more Democrats than Republicans, more English majors than math majors, more secular people than religious people -- and although we value diversity of thought, experience and world view on our staff, the core of our value proposition is that we're accurate in our reporting, fair-minded in setting forth arguments and perspectives even when we don't agree with them, transparent about who we are, attune to our biases and constantly trying to account for them, and insistent that we be judged by our output, not our political or religious or ideological identity, or what we do on weekends. Judge us by our work, and if you challenge it in good faith we'll engage you."

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George Duke

Figure in Black Tights,1967, by Jack Beal
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Inundated by a River of Words

by George F. Will, Washington Post

You step onto an airport’s moving walkway, a flat metal conveyor belt that conveys travelers down an airport concourse, sparing them the indignity of burning a few calories by walking a bit. And soon a recorded voice says: “The moving sidewalk is coming to an end. Please look down.”

Well, yes. Pretty much everything does come to an end, doesn’t it? Besides, we can actually see what we already knew — the moving walkway does not go on forever. So, is that announcement about it ending really necessary? Whatever happened to the rule, “Do not speak unless you can improve the silence”?

Passing through a U.S. airport is an immersion in a merciless river of words. They are intended to be helpful, but clearly they flow from an assumption that increasingly animates our government in its transactions with us. The assumption is that we are all infants or imbeciles in need of constant, kindly supervision and nudging, lest we allow ourselves to be flung off a moving walkway and over the edge of the world.

In Denver, underground trains take passengers to and from the ticketing area and departure concourses. As a train arrives, an announcement slightly louder than the noise of the arriving train says: “A train is arriving.” Do tell.

At Kansas City’s airport, a recurring announcement tells travelers: “Designated smoking areas are located outside, away from doors.” That means the designated smoking areas are pretty much the entire Midwest and everything contiguous to it — all of Creation that is “away from” this airport’s doors.

Perhaps some silly warnings are “necessary” to fend off the Fourth Branch of government, a.k.a. trial lawyers. But this merely underscores the fact that all this noise is symptomatic of modern derangements. Solemn warnings about nonexistent risks, and information intended to spare us the slightest responsibility for passing through life with a modicum of attention and intelligence — these express, among other things, an entitlement mentality that the nanny state foments: If something bad or even inconvenient or merely annoying happens to us, even if it results from our foolishness, daydreaming or brooding about the meaning of life, we are entitled to sue someone for restitution.

These minatory pronouncements pouring from public-address systems would drive us mad if we made the mistake of paying attention to them. Fortunately, Americans’ adaptive response to the ubiquity of advertising has caused them to develop mental filters that reduce public pronouncements to audible wallpaper — there but not noticed. Perhaps this is why the Department of Homeland Security no longer bothers to tell travelers it has set the terrorist threat level at burnt umber, or whatever.

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Gamification

by Gabe Zichermann, O'Reilly Radar

Frequently couched either as a question about demographics or as a personal statement ("I don't ever play games"), gamification is dogged by questions of suitability of purpose, appropriateness of context, or even the semantic conflict around the use of the word "games" itself. Whether you fall into the supporter or detractor camp, it's clear that gamification is inspiring debate and raising questions: play vs. work, intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, authenticity vs. contrivance, just to name a few.

So perhaps the best place to start addressing these issues is with the basics: what can gamification do, why do we care, and what are its limitations.

Gamification's main purpose is to help people get from point A to point B in their lives — whether that's viewed through the lens of personal growth, societal improvement or marketing engagement. We all have the intrinsic desire to be the best possible people we can be, and to make the world in our image of its maximum potential. However, most of us lack the systems thinking (and discipline) required to get to that goal. What games do well is expose complex, learnable systems that users can engage with to achieve personal mastery — and thus accomplish something aspirational.

Weight Watchers is an example. If you ask someone who has successfully lost weight how he or she did it, they might answer with an emphatic "Weight Watchers!" What they don't say is "diet and exercise," which is actually what they did to lose the weight, regardless of pedagogy. Mastering the system — in this case Weight Watchers' gamey approach of points, levels, challenges, leader boards, etc. — becomes what the user most identifies with as having caused their success.

In this way, creating complex systems that can readily be mastered by users across a span of time produces a unique affinity between player and brand. If successful, it's a lifelong connection that transcends the mere exchange of cash and clicks common to most commercial connections. Good gamification has more in common with other complex systems in the world around us than it does with games, per se.

In tactical terms, gamification can be thought of as using some elements of game systems in the cause of a business objective. It's easiest to identify the trend with experiences (frequent flyer programs, Nike Running/Nike+ or Foursquare) that feel immediately game-like. The presence of key game mechanics, such as points, badges, levels, challenges, leader boards, rewards and onboarding, are signals that a game is taking place. Increasingly however, gamification is being used to create experiences that use the power of games without being quite as explicit. In spheres as diverse as HR, healthcare, finance, government and education, companies are pushing the envelope of engaging design with things they learned playing Farmville or World of Warcraft — without trying to build the next Salesforce-branded Angry Birds clone.

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Also:  Gamification Wiki