According to Jane McGonigal, reality is broken and game designers can fix it.

Jane points out four important characteristics of gamers that can make a difference when put to use in real life:

• blissful productivity
• urgent optimism
• tight social fabric
• epic meaning

Watch this amazing TED talk and don’t forget to check out Avantgame’s latest inspiring project, Evoke.

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.

A powerful video drawing parallels between the development of a human fetus from conception to birth and the entire course of our evolution, right up to a version of the proverbial nuclear demise.

Especially during times when things are not so dandy for a lot of people and resources are short, these images should inspire a drive towards constructive introspection.

Let’s make this machinery work FTW!

I wanted to share Steward Brand’s talk on The Long Now Foundation’s ambitious project to build a clock that will be able to hold accurate time every single day for the next 10,000 years.

Far from being a mere engineering gimmick, the project entails the design of a unique and memorable experience during the ascent to the mountain cradling the 10,000 year clock.

Needless to say, long-term thinking like this is extremely valuable and inspiring, especially in these times of alleged crisis.

Recession or no recession – this is a great time to be creative and to focus on what’s really important in the long run.

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• Neal Stephenson and the 10,000-Year Clock
• Stephenson’s Anathem was inspired by Clock of the Long Now
• Neal Stephenson – King of the Worlds

The days started early today at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin – Robert and I are currently at Dion Hinchcliffe’s workshop on Building Successful Web 2.0 Applications.

You can follow my tweets from the event on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tadej (hash tag #web20expo).

Some other tags from the event:

*update* #w2eb now seems to be the one to go with

*SESSION HASH TAGS**
Strategy & Business Models :: #w2eb_strat
Marketing & Community :: #w2eb_mktg
Design & User Experience :: #w2eb_ux
Development :: #w2eb_dev
Sponsored Sessions :: #w2eb_ss
Keynotes :: #w2eb_key

There is also an official back channel.

Our friends from Zemanta will have (at least) two presentations here (let me know if there are more):

• Andraz Tori: Beyond Who Else Bought What
• Marko Samastur: Easy Deployment of Site Extensions With Browser Plugins

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• Berlin – the tag debate…w2eb?

Sling Jumper – an ingeniously simple and effective Flash game concept.

Crappy graphics, no sound and zero story line – but certainly great gameplay.

Use LEFT and RIGHT to move the ball bouncing off the elastics.