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Waterford SQL, Games for Health, Virtual Epidemics, Visions of Science

  • Artigo

I'm down to Waterford tonight to talk about SQL Server 2005 at the local INDA usergroup.  If you're down in the southeast, come on out and I look forward to seeing you at Dooley's Hotel.

Just a bit of personal interest to round out my blog for today.  Gamasutra (a site devoted to the art and science of making games) has an interesting write-up on the Games for Health conference.  The piece works as a thoughtful survey paper on a number of ways people are using interactive techniques to contribute to medicine and therapy - from next-generation healthcare learning to abstact visualization of chemotherapy. 

One technique they mention -- distracting patients and mitigating their pain by using immersive virtual worlds -- is something we worked on back at MediaLabEurope.  The article cites Free Dive, a scuba diving simulation, as a beautiful and engaging distractor, but I found the concept of SnowWorld even more intriguing: burn patients were distracted (and their pain successfully diminished) by being immersed in the the context of a virtual tundra populated by arctic phenomena.  The one thing most virtual worlds lack is an understanding (and utilization) of real-world context, but SnowWorld by contrast uses contextual contrast to produce its effect.

The article includes an interesting aside on the virtual epidemic that's allegedly sweeping the massively multiplayer game World of Warcraft.  I don't play massively multiplayer games, but have long been intrigued by the academic study of the way in which their virtual economies model and mimic real-world economies.  Apparently, massively multiplayer online worlds might similarly be useful for observing the spread of an epidemic.

Finally, a dose of Thursday-morning coolness: the BBC site is hosting the winners of the Visions of Science photography contest.  They had me hooked at the first image.

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