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Videos

mwesch — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:09:50 CST

Warning: If you are a future participant of a world simulation, you may not want to watch these videos. There are some possible "spoilers" revealed.

KSU Spring 2007 "World History" Video

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mwesch — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:48:27 CST

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Instructions

mwesch — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:02:24 CST

Break the class up into 14+ groups. The simulation works well with groups of 10-20 students. I'm sure variations of this will probably work with single player "cultures." (post ideas if you have them!)

Each group creates their own culture,step-by-step, as we go through each aspect of culture in class, completing their ownethnography about their culture.

The main event is the World Simulationin which all cultures interact with one another. The goal of this simulation is simple: to figure out how the world works (or at least allow students to *think* about this big question).

Here is a trailer for the simulation as it is ran by Michael Wesch at Kansas State University:

Writing the Ethnography

mwesch — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 07:01:43 CST

Each student will be required to write a 500 word report on one particular aspect of the culture, with particular attention to how it is integrated with other aspects of their culture. Each student will do a different aspect of the culture so that when they are all put together it will form a full ethnography of the culture. The topics, along with the dates they will be discussed, are posted on a separate sheet of paper. As a group you need to make sure that all aspects are covered.
You will be responsible for the section you sign up for and it should be an ongoing process of writing. For example, if you are assigned the mode of subsistence, you should write up the 500 word report on it right after it is discussed with your group. You can then post your draft to the group section in K-State Online so other members of your group can view it and discuss it. You may need to make a few changes throughout the semester based on your group’s comments, or based on changes you all decide to make to your culture later on in the semester.

Each section should include 3 elements.
1. Thorough description of the aspect of culture to be described (multiple paragraphs).
2. One paragraph comparing it to other real-world cultures.
3. One final paragraph briefly describing how it is integrated with other aspects of your culture. This may need to be written later in the semester after you see the whole culture take shape.

Grading criteria

30% Integration of culture. The aspect of culture you describe must be realistically integrated into the rest of the culture your group has created. Be sure that what you describe reflects the core values of the culture you are all creating. The last paragraph is your chance to defend what you have written as integrated with the rest of the ethnography. It should be believable in terms of the real world and the real cultures we have studied or that you researched outside of class.

30% Research. You should do some research into groups that have similar environments or characteristics as your own culture and make comparisons to these groups to show that your description is plausible.

20% Quality. Your contribution should be well-written. If you have troubleswith writing I highly encourage you to use the Writing Center on campus.

20%Creativity and Insight. This is the something extra you add by thinkingabout the material in-depth and tapping into your own creativity.

The basics

mwesch — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:37:39 CST

World Simulation Basic Rules
(If you have ideas, e-mail me!)

* Props *
Money
Hard Power (paper cards with numbers on them)
Natural Resources (yellow notecards)
Sacred Items (often stuffed animals)
Land (Cereal Boxes with your culture’s name on it.)
Status Items
Mobility Maps (see below)

Cereal Symbolism
Fruit Loops = Rich, varied, and nutritious diet
Cheerios = Monotonous, not rich, non-nutritious diet
Cocoa Puffs = Luxury consumption goods (chocolate, coffee, tobacco)

THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE OF ALL

TRY. Please put your best efforts into making this simulation work. It will require a great deal of imagination on all of our parts. We have all learned a great deal about how cultures are integrated and interrelated. As each event occurs, do your best to “stay in character” and really act out what might actually happen in these different scenarios. If for some reason you are isolated with nothing to do and nobody to interact with, please try to imagine what you might do if you were actually a part of the culture you have created within this world system and find a way to interact with others. If this is impossible, use the time to discuss with your group how your culture might have changed given what has occurred so far. Consider all the different aspects of culture – infrastructure, social structure, and superstructure – and how they might have changed given the things that have happened to your culture during the simulation.

Setting
Populations of cultures have been set to approximate world populations as of 1450 at the dawn of European colonization (400 million). World population will roughly double in each interaction, simulating the real world’s population growth (We will end with 6.2 billion people). Throughout the simulation your own population may increase or decrease based on famine, disease, or shift to a new subsistence pattern (e.g. industrial agriculture would increase your “carrying capacity” and thereby increase your population tremendously). This will be indicated in your envelope at the beginning of the round.

Goals
* Understand the “structural power” of the world by simulating it in a form that allows us to see it all at once.
* Understand the many nuances and challenges of cultural change by experiencing those changes ourselves.

Basic Rules
There will be 5 sessions lasting approximately 17 minutes each. These 17 minutes are divided into 3 parts.
* 10 minutes of interaction time
* 3 minutes of “take account” time in which you “feed yourself” “pay your laborers” etc. (see below)
* 4 minutes of “World News” by Professor Wesch

Each interaction will begin with each group opening an envelope providing the scenario for that particular interaction.

In order to survive, at the end of each session you must have a piece of food (cereal) to eat. This will require either land (a cereal box from which you can get food) or money to buy food from others. Note: This rule does not apply to industrial powers as they are those few people in the world who never have to worry about having enough food to eat.

If you cannot eat at the end of the interaction, your death is marked as a “famine” in the “history book” (see below) and your death will decrease the total population of your culture by 5%. Even though you died, YOU STILL INTERACT IN THE NEXT INTERACTION, but you must move to a different culture / colony as a refugee.

Each industrialized culture must use one yellow card (representing natural resources) at the end of each round (hand it to one of the World Sim Observers or your Historian). If you do not have a yellow card at the end of the round you do not get your next envelope (which may include hard power and/or important knowledge.

Hard Power & The Rules of War
Each culture will start with a certain amount of hard power with which to launch attacks or protect themselves. Hard power will be a number between 0 and 1,000,000. This will be distributed among a number of cards with the numbers written on them. Each culture will have as many as 50 hard power cards with different numbers on them. When traveling the traveler should carry some of this hard power with them, however one must recognize that taking too much depletes the amount of hard power others in the group can carry or could leave your home culture completely unprotected.

Each culture has a POWER CIRCLE. Whoever stands in the POWER CIRCLE controls the land of the culture. (They do not control the people, but the people need to eat, so they may need to cooperate with the person who controls all the land.) You will want to protect your power circle from invaders who can use hard power to knock you out of the power circle and take control of your land.

A battle begins with somebody from one culture challenges the person standing in the power circle. Both sides quickly decide how much hard power they want to use in the first battle and places these cards in their right hand. At the count of 3 each side shows the other the hard power they are holding in their right hand. The side with the most hard power wins the battle and gets all of the hard power expended by the other culture. The war is over when one side surrenders or is completely out of hard power. Terms of surrender are negotiable between the two warring parties but may include a right to hold on to some hard power, money, land production rights, etc.

The winner occupies the land and will then acts as a colonizer or occupier. The colonizer can tax the people, take the land, force people into labor, force them to grow different crops, or kill them all (genocide). If genocide is committed, you will need to leave your land and become “refugees” in another nearby land. You will then live out the rest of the simulation as a refugee in a foreign land. If a war is to end in a virtual stale-mate, the group already occupying the land stays on the land and both teams retain their hard power.

Alliances can be made through whatever trades or agreements two cultures can make and will allow one culture to draw on the hard power of the other and vice versa.

Important Note: If you lose your Fruit Loops and they are gone at the end of the round, they are gone forever. You join the World System and must find a new way to survive.

Mobility
Mobility Maps – Each group will have Mobility Maps. They may visit only those cultures on the maps they hold. All travel must be done with one of these maps. These maps are necessary to simulate the limited mobility of different cultures. Large states will have significantly more mobility than others. Ocean fishing cultures will have mobility reflecting their ability to travel over oceans but will be limited in their inland travel.

How to make a colony

mwesch — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:34:30 CST

How to make a colony ...
(These instructions are only for potential colonizers!)

What you need to bring (note that all supplies will be available to you on the day of the simulation):
* Hard Power (to conquer and then protect the colony)
* Money (at least 50 one’s to pay for labor)
* A small bag of cheerios (so they can buy them from you with the money you pay them)
* Materials needed for their labor

Instructions

1. Grab the materials above and go to the colony.

2. Gain control of the land by:
a. asking for it OR (if that does not work)
b. waging war with your hard power.

3. If you conquer them you are now the colonial administrator. Stay in the POWER CIRCLE with the amount of hard power you think you might need to protect the colony from other colonizing forces (or from a rebellion waged by the people themselves).

4. You have several choices at this point.
A. Steal their land (cereal box).
B. Tax their land (If they can’t pay, take it.)
C. Let them keep their land but ask for taxes in the form
of production from the land. (This is good, but then
you have no market for your own commodities
(Cheerios).
D. Kill them all (Genocide) – but then they become
refugees of the neighboring culture of their choice
and you have no access to their labor.

5. If you let them live you can use their labor for whatever task you may have in mind. There are a number of different tasks you might want done, such as:
A. Growing “cotton” (cutting yarn into 2 foot lengths for necklace production).
B. Growing cash crops / mining diamonds (bagging fruit loops by color to send back to your culture – or to be used in necklace production).
C. Labor: Stringing necklaces (placing the fruitloops on the string)
D. Growing Luxury Goods (wrapping cocoa puffs in foil and placing in bags of 20 for export back to your home country)
F. Mining – Producing Natural Resources (taping together yellow cards)

6. Let them know that you will be paying them. Make sure you pay them at least enough that they stay alive otherwise you lose their labor. Give them each at least a dollar if you want them to survive and then sell them each a cheerio at $1/each. You can raise their wages as you see fit. Giving them extra Cheerios does not work because a Cheerio outside the bag is only good for that round. It will rot by the end of the 100 years simulated in the next round.

7. At the end of the round, pay them, sell them Cheerios, and use the time to deliver goods back and forth to your home country. You will only have about 3 minutes to do this.

Details on production strategies
As you get your system of global production running you will need to be shipping materials to different areas. Take extra fruit loop boxes to places where you have created large scale fruit loop agriculture. Make sure they sort the colors as part of the “farming”. There are a few places that will be worthless except for the labor they can provide. Use them to string your necklaces. You will need to ship the cotton and fruit loops to them for assembly. Cotton, Fruit Loops, and Cocoa Puffs will only grow in specific areas. These areas will be revealed in the envelopes provided at the simulation.

FRUIT LOOP PRODUCTION
All Fruit Loop boxes should be sent to the equatorial islands where vast quantities of this crop can be grown. See your production map for more details.

· Give them small sandwich bags and ask them to sort the Fruit Loops into different colors.
· Ship these bags to “LABOR” locations where they meet up with cotton to be made into Fruit Loop necklaces.
· Make sure you pay them. They can then use this money to buy Cheerios. Remember if they do not get fed they will all die and will not be able to work for you any more.

If you have not acquired a “LABOR” location you may need to double-up duties in one of your colonies.

COTTON PRODUCTION
See your production map for locations where cotton can be grown. These are the only places where cotton can be pulled and cut (representing its “growth”).

· Take away their ability to produce and subsist on their rich and varied diet (Fruit Loops).
· Put them to work cutting yarn into lengths of approximately 27 inches (about 6 inches longer than an arm’s length).
· Make sure you pay them. They can then use this money to buy Cheerios. Remember if they do not get fed they will all die and will not be able to work for you any more.

The yarn can then be shipped to a “LABOR” location where it can be used to string fruit loops into Fruit Loop necklaces.

LUXURY GOOD (COCOA PUFF) PRODUCTION
See production map for locations where luxury goods can be grown. These are the only places where cocoa puffs can be removed from the box (representing their “growth”).

· Bring a box of cocoa puffs, foil, small sandwich bags and a pair of scissors to one of the regions where luxury goods can be produced
· Ask them to wrap individual cocoa puffs in foil into “teardrop” shapes.
· They must place 20 of these in a bag to form one status item.
· Ship them back home where your people can eat them. They count as status items.

LABOR / NECKLACE PRODUCTION
All SORTED fruit loops and cut string should be sent to “LABOR” locations.

· Each necklace must be strung with 4 of each color of fruit loop and then tied together to form a necklace.
· Ship the necklaces back home where your people can wear them proudly.
· Make sure you pay them. They can then use this money to buy Cheerios. Remember if they do not get fed they will all die and will not be able to work for you any more.

If you have not acquired a “LABOR” location you may need to double-up duties in one of your colonies.

Your necklaces may be de-valued based on the quality of workmanship.