Conceptimals
As the term implies, these little guys are a mixture of concept and animal. They are animated concepts. They will appear on many horizons of the Big Sky: exploration of key fields, knowledge engineering, visualizations, games, journaling, connectionist modeling, virtual worlds and, maybe, as keys to figuring out what might be going on in the Big Sky Mountain Range.
The Game of Conceptimal Creation
In terms of the Big Sky Game conceptimals are the basic game pieces, tiles or cards. As the host I will introduce them, deal them out, set them into play, one by one. When they first appear they will not have very much structure or form. This is on purpose - we want to have a good look at them as they appear in their most basic form so that we can get acquainted with them. There are over 1000 of them already in line, cooling their heals, waiting to get into the game. Later, participants will be invited to create even more Conceptimals and we’ll drop them in with the rest and see what happens!
Conceptimal Elaboration
Over time we will add information about a given conceptimal's abilities, properties, social life, natural complexity, granularity and ... well - that's what well be figuring out. As we go we will help them fill out and grow by experimenting with approaches to knowledge engineering, data modeling and object oriented design.
Conceptimal Social Life
We will gather up little groups of them and put them together into various containers, ecosystems, virtual and artificial worlds, logic machines and processes to see how they behave. We'll use special lenses, thought experiments and other observational processes to see if we can learn more about them. We'll help them get connected up with each other in various ways - some useful, some just for fun. We'll explore ideas of semantic networking, mind mapping and knowledge formation.
Conceptimal Shake Up
Any time we feel like it we will pick up these coneptimals in their temporary containers and shake up their little worlds (they're ok with it - it doesn't hurt), set them back down and watch to see how they recombine, reassemble or respond. Any time we feel like it we can add more conceptimals to the containers and keep going. Or we can dump the whole group of them back into the Big Game container, shake the whole thing up and pour them out again into groups.
Meta Game
Now as we are having fun this way there is another meta game going on. Each one of us has a set of conceptimals that more or less resemble the ones we are playing around with in the Big Sky game. In fact we have millions of them. For the most part they live in our memories, in our minds, in our brains. As we interact with the conceptimals in the Game each of us will necessarily also be interacting with the conceptimals in our minds. The combination of our individual minds, the conceptimals found there, and the Big Sky Game form a system, a container. This system comprises a meta game of enormously greater complexity and potential.
Meta-Meta Game
On top of the meta-game we us contribute to, there is yet another meta-level game already forming, for free - it just happens whenever we interact together as learners and thinkers. Because whenever we feel like it we can cause our meta-systems to interact with each other by communicating with one another. This explodes the game to larger orders of magnitude yet. In some ways the various families of human cultures and human histories are interlocking, dynamic and interactive sets of Meta-Meta Games.
You get the idea.
Meta-N Game
Guess what? - we are going to talk about something called a Meta-N Game, where N represents any number of meta-levels. I can think of at least four MORE dimensions - I am sure I have not thought hard enough.
Note: You can safely stop reading here - you have the idea. What follows is a list of some of the places where we look to gather up Conceptimals or get inspiration for new ones that are likely to exist.
Conceptimal Ecosystems
Major disciplines of study and research can be thought of as ecosystems where we might find our Conceptimals hanging out. Some of these ecosystems are listed else ware: Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Knowledge Engineering, Complex Systems, Game Theory, Journaling, Intelligent Learning Environments, Attention, Memory, Personality, Culture, Language, Aesthetics and Art.
Here are a few more ecosystems where we find our Concptimals.
Mathematics, Physics, Design, Probability Theory, Economics, History, Intelligent Tutoring Systems ….
Conceptimals already in the game! ->
Example Conceptimals: