Manikin reveals its internal structure through the user interaction. Manikin takes the form of a multi-user game that is set in a fictional city surrounded by a dome. In the city, players have the ability to interact with and manipulate the city’s inhabitants in two different modes, vector mode or developer mode. Each mode gives players a different perspective of the game and provides them with different options for interacting with the citizens of the city. The game play is organized around the same principles and rules that loosely define object-oriented programming. While experimenting with different strategies, players discover these rules and manipulate them in ways that allow shifts from centralized to decentralized systems. Players receive feedback in the form of game response.

Developer View

Vector View

Hardware Setup

Currently I’m doing a summer workshop with several different groups of high school students on new media literacy- specifically I’m spending a great deal of time having them analyze a variety of online tools and platforms that they personally rely on. This process has brought to my attention some specifics regarding the issue of online youth empowerment.

Within the groups I’m working with at the moment, an interesting dichotomy has emerged between the platforms they accept and those they reject. For the platforms or tools that they reject, they either exhibit extreme skepticism of their utility and a fear of privacy issues. These hesitations do not come from the direct experience with the platforms themselves, but rather through a general sense of wider privacy debates taking place in the media, and a youth cultural stigma against online interaction.

For the platforms that they do choose to accept, they tend to have a sense of the practical utility. They however have a diminished, if not completely non-existent sense of the larger functionality of the platform, particularly on issues of automated personalization and data ownership.

I’m continuing my work with these students and additional groups throughout the summer and into the fall. Currently they are working on analytical projects, but gradually we will be moving in to more practical projects based work. My goal through these workshops is to continue evaluating this dichotomy of acceptance and rejection, and also conduct research to address a number of questions that have emerged.

First, what criteria determine which platforms are accepted and which are rejected? For example, students are often dependent on facebook but reject twitter completely. There are clearly some obvious reasons for this, but interestingly, I’ve found so far that their largest criticism of Twitter is that it is a network for “stalkers”, however they don’t apply this same criticism to facebook, which shares many similar features. Often students seem to feel more comfortable using networks in which the parameters for use are clearly and strictly defined. Platforms with a more open-ended approach are generally disregarded. This pattern coincides with a greater educational trend that my colleagues and I have been encountering, where students are increasingly uncomfortable receiving assignments that do not have explicitly defined objectives and guidelines.

Second, both as educators and media makers, how do we foster a more sophisticated understanding of online functionality in youth users who both rely heavily on these systems, but are unable to leverage them in ways that maximize their personal, professional and social footing?

How do we allow them to simultaneously be aware of some of the potential risks and disadvantages of these platforms, while still enabling them to take advantage of the opportunities and benefits they offer?  Overall, how do we simultaneously create technical platforms and educational systems that create a sense of personal agency?