I guess I should come right out and admit it. I play online games. Alot. They are fun, challenging, and wonderfully social. As an information architect, however, they also intrigue me as amazing and fun tools for learning and displaying information.

NASA is currently accepting proposals for the development of a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) learning game. An MMO is a video game where hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously “play” by interacting for cooperation and/or competition in a rich, immersive virtual environment. Using this technology NASA can create a scientifically accurate world for “hands-on” experience in fields from microgravity to chemical engineering. Developing skills along they way such as strategic thinking, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building and cooperation, and adaptation to rapid change.

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A lot of thought and discussion has occurred lately concerning how to improve our internal communications in NASA. Here at JSC, this discussion has culminated with the release of the 20 Year Vision proposal. I am both honored and fortunate to have met with some of the people who made it happen and look forward to working with them on the implementation of those ideas.

With that in mind, I think that some of my professional experiences elsewhere can be brought to bear on this topic. In between undergrad and grad school, I worked in the intelligence community (IC) for a few years as a missile analyst. If you think the NASA community is results-oriented, the IC takes it to a whole new level.

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I’ve finally compiled a report on the open discussion we held a couple of weeks ago in Second Life to begin brainstorming where virtual worlds are going, and how NASA can and should shape its contributions to this important emerging technology. From the draft report:

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we had our third luna philosophie on july 30^th with bruce damer. he gave a great talk about the history of virtual environments and all the amazing work his company Digital Space has done with NASA over the years. It’s interesting to see how closely coupled that evolution has been to supporting the simulation of space environments. Ames Center Director Pete Worden attended the salon, and afterwards requested a briefing on virtual worlds and where we thought the Center should and could be directing research to move forward state of the art in this area. I’m organizing an in-world (Second Life) open meeting tomorrow (tuesday, august 7th) to have a discussion about this, and will follow up with a meeting at Ames. this work is also expected to go towards a director’s weekend workshop at Ames about virtual worlds, likely sometime in december.

more info about the meeting (copy and pasted from announcement email): Read the rest of this entry »