Can a Massively Multiplayer Online game Forecast the Future?
25Sep08 by Matt Sinclair
Monday 22nd saw the official launch of Superstruct, an online ‘game’ devised by the Institute For The Future, which aims to be the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting exercise. Currently in preview mode, the game is due to be ‘switched on’ on October 6th, but some of the responses to Superstruct’s scenarios already show the level of creativity that might be expected.
Superstruct presents a scenario set in 2019, in which the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS), a computer simulation that predicts the extinction of the planet’s species, has forecast 2042 as the year in which the human race dies out. According to the Superstruct press release, this forecast differs from previous doomsday predictions in that
“GEAS does not link this extinction to a single factor. No one disease or war or environmental hazard poses a sufficient danger to draw us to this conclusion. Instead, it is the combination of factors, each below the threshold necessary to put our survival at risk. These factors–which we are calling “super-threats”–reinforce each other in substantive ways, creating a set of conditions that we believe capable of ending the human experiment.”
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