Online learning at its most effective?

Recently, I've been enjoying playing the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) Final Fantasy XI. The premise is simple - progress through the story by defeating increasingly tough monsters and boosting your character's strength.

What has struck me today is that it provides a fascinating parallel KM universe. Bear with me...

After an initial period of alignment to learn rules and achieve basic competency, it soon becomes apparent that collaboration is preferable to going it alone. Thus, by level 10, most players abandon the solo approach and begin to form parties with others.

These parties have their own microcosmic team dynamics: leadership, concensus, teamworking. Agreed roles and responsibilities are essential: a White Mage heals other characters, a Warrior deals damage, etc. Parties must, of course, contain a good cross-section of skills and abilities - for instance a party of 6 Warriors simply won't work. There are some obvious parallels here with teamwork in the business environment and the benefits of, say, Belbin profiling.

The most notable product of this team work is a remarkable culture of altruism that persists throughout FFXI. The developers have intelligently avoided spoon-feeding players, meaning that interaction with others is vital to proceed in the game. Even our old friend the Community of Practice is represented via linkshells, virtual groups of like-minded friends. As with CoPs, the best provide a platform for social networking, healthy debate and learning for the good of all.

Players often give up valuable time to help others, either through the official mentoring scheme, helping newer adventurers to fight ("power-levelling"), or simply answering questions asked by those at the end of their tethers.

Why do they invest this time? (See also the old KM chestnut: "What's in it for me?") I'm convinced that the lack of competition between players is a major factor. Players cannot attack each other or hinder others' progress in any meaningful way*. In this utopian world, knowledge is not a means of preserving an advantage over others - it is, instead, a way to further the pursuit of goals.

Perhaps I'm wrong and FFXI is just an escapist world where politics, war and rivalry mean little. Perhaps it's just a place for people to go to act in ways they would never in real life. Still, it's worth considering how we can reduce the competitive element of knowledge sharing and attempt to foster the 'what's mine is yours' approach in the real world.

*As an aside, other MMORPGs that have allowed competition have, perhaps unsurprisingly, spawned online homicide, cons and muggings. Sometimes thefts have even deprived players of items that have value in the real world.

A self-indulgent treatise on semiotics and why "You Are Driving A Volvo" isn't shit

Primary reason for the lack of updates is that I was in London all last week on a course (OLAP cube analysis if you must know). As always on these occasions, I popped over to Tate Modern for an hour or so. It's become like visiting an old friend. Two new items of note: Eliasson's The Weather Project installation and Julian Opie's You Are Driving A Volvo. An unknown to me, but it transpires he's responsible for Blur's pop art-esque Best Of.. cover. Always quite liked that and some of his other works are pretty good too.

Cue a discussion on one of my messageboards - the old "Is this art?" debate. Me? I think that if you have to ask, it's definitely art. But how can I justify that for what is, after all, just a block of wood shaped and painted like a car?

On consideration, I think it appeals to me thanks to my interest in semiotics. Some definitions:

"The study of doctrine of signs, sometimes supposed to be a science of signs; the systematic investigation of the nature, properties, and kinds of sign, especially when undertaken in a self-conscious way."

"The theory of symbols and signs which explores how people glean meaning from words, sounds, and pictures. Sometimes used in researching names for various products and services. "

Clearly it's the symbol of a car that conjures up everything that we know about cars ("They go fast", "They use petrol", "I was sick in the back of a Toyota Corolla" etc). The inferred relationships are far more interesting than the car itself. Semiotics is one of those fascinating fields that seems to blend cognitive psychology, design and philosophy in one. I always appreciate ways of elevating the day-to-day mundanity of 'things' to a higher, more general level. I don't agree with Plato's theory of Forms (as I understand it, that each object we encounter is a flawed copy of a divine blueprint which only the enlightened can see) but I must admit I admire where he's coming from and the sheer audacity of his thoughts.

This all brings me round to the real issue: why I actually quite like my job. Semiotics is certainly a big feature of information architecture, along with a whole host of other fields (programming, graphic design, Human-Computer Interaction, research, psychology, information management) that run the gamut from the highly technical to the hand-wavingly vague. I can't think of many other jobs that have that sort of variety.

MSN’s mercy killing

Obviously you've already heard about MSN's decision to close its chatrooms. What a stupid and yet brilliant idea.

I don't even need to bother attacking the ridiculous logic behind the claim it will protect children. It won't. But I am utterly in awe of the business thinking behind it. In short, they not only get to drop a loss-making service that had no hope of ever generating revenue, but they also do this while maintaining a fantastic PR front. The Internet market has shifted substantially over the last five years: families are the target now - the techies have been connected for years. Now MSN have seized this market in a way other ISPs will struggle to catch up with.

Game, set and match. It's also got another interesting side in that it's the first example of a truly major Internet service moving to a fee-paying structure. This has been happening for small applications for years, but this takes it to a whole new level. The gift economy of the Internet is, sadly, dying. MSN have decided to make it a mercy killing.