IFTF is hiring: Community Leaders/Game Masters for Superstruct

The Institute for the Future is hiring five community leaders/game masters for the upcoming future forecasting game Superstruct.

It’s an eight-week position beginning September 8, 2008. You can be a game master from anywhere in the world (outside of US is okay; we will have players from all over the world, although primarily playing in English), and it will require ~ 12 hours of online work per week. You’ll work very closely with Jane McGonigal (Avant Game) and Jamais Cascio (Open the Future). This is a non-profit game with no commercial sponsors; the position comes with a stipend of $2500.

Skills required: Great forum writing skills; online storytelling experience (blogs, videos, photos, Twitter, etc.); curiosity about the future; some expertise in issues related to sustainability, global health, environmental or climate issues, global business, social networks, or anything else you think might be useful to solving the problems of the future. We're open to considering anyone with great writing skills and a desire to investigate the future! No technical skills required, just great Internet skills.

Your job will be to lead a team of players (at minimum, hundreds of players; more likely, thousands of players) in creating a collaborative online forecast of the year 2019. The forecasting will take place through wikis, forums, videos, blogs, Twitter, online comics, photo sets, and whatever else our players use to depict and talk about the future. You'll be reading and watching lots of player-created content, in addition to making your own content. You'll give the players feedback, and you'll synthesize and summarize the most interesting things in a short weekly story. You'll be moderating forums and wikis dedicated to solving a particular future-problem. You'll have to help your community manage a careful balance between "wow, the future might be scary" storytelling to "you know what, we might actually be able to solve this problem before it kills us all" optimism. Because the game isn't just about imagining the future. It's about inventing the future. This game is a kind of working prototype for the year 2019!

Each game master will focus on one of five "superthreats", ranging from a devastating disruption of the food supply chain, to a pandemic, to "global weirding" weather patterns to create millions of climate refugees. (Depending on your interest and area of expertise, we'll make sure you get the right topic!) In the two weeks before the game launches, we'll give you a crash course in the IFTF research that is guiding this game, so you'll be an expert on your area when the game launches on September 22, 2008.

To apply: Send a letter to Jane at superstruct@iftf.org explaining why you want to join us on the Superstruct team. Mention any previous experience as a writer, or thinking about the future, playing or making games, running online communities, or being an interesting person online. Include a CV or resume if you think it will help explain who you are, but most importantly, in your letter, answer this question: It's the summer of 2019. You are yourself, but 10 years in the future. Describe where you are having for dinner, what you're eating, and what you're thinking or talking about. How did you wind up there, compared to where you had dinner most often in the summer of 2008?

Superstruct! Play the game, invent the future.

This fall, the Institute for the Future invites you to play Superstruct, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. It’s not just about envisioning the future—it’s about inventing the future. Everyone is welcome to join the game. Watch for the opening volley of threats and survival stories, September 2008.

*

This is a game of survival, and we need you to survive.

Super-threats are massively disrupting global society as we know it. There’s an entire generation of homeless people worldwide, as the number of climate refugees tops 250 million. Entrepreneurial chaos and “the axis of biofuel” wreak havoc in the alternative fuel industry. Carbon quotas plummet as food shortages mount. The existing structures of human civilization—from families and language to corporate society and technological infrastructures—just aren’t enough. We need a new set of superstructures to rise above, to take humans to the next stage.

You can help. Tell us your story. Strategize out loud. Superstruct now.

It's your legacy to the human race.

Want to learn more about the game? Read the Superstruct FAQ.

Not the best email to receive from your phone company

From: Xiptel Support Services
Date: July 15, 2008 2:18:07 AM PDT
To: support@xiptel.com
Subject: ***XIPTEL SERVICE OUTAGE***

Monday evening XIPTEL's services were interrupted at approximately 6:40 PM due to a power outage at the Fremont, CA data center. When power was in the process of being restored, a power surge destroyed the primary and secondary firewall systems, which has continued the outage. Technicians and resources have been working through the night in an effort fix the problem. It is anticipated that service will be out completely for 24 to 36 hours, although we hope and are working to have it back sooner. As soon as we have further information we will communicate that to you. We apologize for the disruption and we are working to restore service as quickly as possible.
--
XIPTEL

Superstruct! Play the game, invent the future.

[This post was copied from IFTF's Future Now blog]

This fall, the Institute for the Future invites you to play Superstruct, the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. It’s not just about envisioning the future—it’s about inventing the future. Everyone is welcome to join the game. Watch for the opening volley of threats and survival stories, September 2008.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

Humans have 23 years to go

Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens.

PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the "survival horizon" for Homo sapiens - the human race - from "indefinite" to 23 years.

“The survival horizon identifies the point in time after which a threatened population is expected to experience a catastrophic collapse,” GEAS president Audrey Chen said. “It is the point from which it a species is unlikely to recover. By identifying a survival horizon of 2042, GEAS has given human civilization a definite deadline for making substantive changes to planet and practices.”

According to Chen, the latest GEAS simulation harnessed over 70 petabytes of environmental, economic, and demographic data, and was cross-validated by ten different probabilistic models. The GEAS models revealed a potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats”, which represent a collision of environmental, economic, and social risks. “Each super-threat on its own poses a serious challenge to the world's adaptive capacity,” said GEAS research director Hernandez Garcia. “Acting together, the five super-threats may irreversibly overwhelm our species’ ability to survive.”Garcia said, “Previous GEAS simulations with significantly less data and cross-validation correctly forecasted the most surprising species collapses of the past decade: Sciurus carolinenis and Sciurus vulgaris, for example, and the Anatidae chen. So we have very good reason to believe that these simulation results, while shocking, do accurately represent the rapidly growing threats to the viability of the human species.”

GEAS notified the United Nations prior to making a public announcement. The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Vaira Vike-Freiberga released the following statement: "We are grateful for GEAS' work, and we treat their latest forecast with seriousness and profound gravity."

GEAS urges concerned citizens, families, corporations, institutions, and governments to talk to each other and begin making plans to deal with the super-threats.

###

This is a game of survival, and we need you to survive.

Super-threats are massively disrupting global society as we know it. There’s an entire generation of homeless people worldwide, as the number of climate refugees tops 250 million. Entrepreneurial chaos and “the axis of biofuel” wreak havoc in the alternative fuel industry. Carbon quotas plummet as food shortages mount. The existing structures of human civilization—from families and language to corporate society and technological infrastructures—just aren’t enough. We need a new set of superstructures to rise above, to take humans to the next stage.

You can help. Tell us your story. Strategize out loud. Superstruct now.

It's your legacy to the human race.

Want to learn more about the game? Read the Superstruct FAQ.

Superstruct Now

Get a head start on the game. It’s the summer of 2019. Imagine you’re already there, and tell us a little bit about your future self. Where are you having dinner tonight?

Post your comments and/or read others on the original post.

IFTF is hiring 2 PHP gaming programmers...help us make a game!

The Institute for the Future is looking for two PHP programmers to help build our first ever MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER FORECASTING GAME. Players will work together to forecast the year 2019, and the game focuses on real-world threats to the survival of the human species.

Basically, it's an exciting and save-the-world kind of project. Join us!

Here's what we need:

FRONT-END: A WEB INTERFACE PROGRAMMER who can build highly interactive web pages in PHP and work with the game design team to spec the design and with the graphic design team to implement the design. UI Flash skills are a plus.

BACK-END: A DATABASE PROGRAMMER who can work in PHP. Tasks will include integrating web forms for capturing blog posts, setting up forums, doing simple surveys, computing survey results, and feeding results to graphic displays. Drupal knowledge is a plus.

Both positions are short-term positions that start immediately and are expected to last through September. San Francisco/Bay Area individuals are preferred, but remote work is possible. Salaries commensurate with experience.

This is an opportunity to work with a game pioneer and a world-renown non-profit research institute to help address the problems we face as a global society over the coming decade. We expect this game to be groundbreaking and receive a lot of attention, not to mention extremely fun to work on.

Interested? Send Jane an email and tell her about yourself and your experience - write to jane @ avantgame dot com!

Facebook...you make no sense

Yesterday, I received an email from Facebook indicating that IFTF had been granted Network-status. It took a while for IFTF to be listed in the network directory and after finding it, sharing my work email, and confirming my email, I was presented with the following information:


My question...why send the email to me/create a network for my employer in the first place?