The Ulysses Game

Megs told me this fantastic story yesterday about her own days as an English Undergrad which illustrates one of the real tangible benefits of our herd nature: “distributed memory”. That is, the ability of a group of people to collectively recall than any one individual can on their own (sort of the opposite of the Wisdom of Crowds thesis that John and Brainjuicer have put to such good use).

Under the time-honoured Oxbridge tutorial system, Undergrads are supposed to read and write an essay or do a tutorial (intimate seminar) on one major work a week (think you’re supposed to have read them in the vacations, actually but that’s beside the point).

James Joyce’s Ulysses weighs in at more than 1000 pages in the paperback version. It is also very heavy going as a text. Therefore very unlikely that any self-respecting individual will have read it all (most people who own a copy haven’t).

The solution that Megs and her chums came up with to get through that week’s assignment was to each read chunks at random, have some kind of narrative structure cheat (such as this) and hope that by working together n the tutorial they could all create the impression that they remembered it.

Seemed to work remarkably well. What none could have achieved on their own, together they managed very well (and to the tutor’s satisfaction, so I’m told). And allegedly re-applied to lots of other tricky but dull texts. Which gave all of them rather more time to enjoy the latter stages of the undergrad life than those who’d waded through the piece.

Of course, M subsequently ended up with a 1st class degree. And has gone on to great things in planning-land. But that’s not the point (or maybe it is…)

Russ did a podcast for the latest APSotW assignment the other day (he’s going to post it today I think) and one of the themes that came out loud and clear about planning was our willingness to steal, copy, repurpose and remix other people’s work and thinking (rather than have to do it all from scratch every time ourselves). Another version of the same thing which I will now forever refer to as the “Ulysses Game”