the Up series

[gusl]

The "Up series" seems like an early form of reality TV. It starts interviewing people when they are 7, and check up on them every 7 years. It gives the viewer all these data points about how people turn out in life. In latest one, the subjects are 49.

YouTube has some clips of it. This one is about a guy who was homeless for several years before eventually making a career in local politics.

One of them became a professor, moved to the USA and married a social scientist who made an interesting video game, that allows people to experience what it's like to be perceived as having different personal characteristics (race/gender/etc):

Brunner has spent the last decade studying women leaders and power within school administration. In 2002 she partnered with the Digital Media Center at the University of Minnesota to create Experiential Simulations (ES), an online environment similar to a chat room where participants’ true identities are masked to others in the group. Each participant is given a “modified persona”—an assigned gender, racial, class, and positional identity unlike their own. They are instructed to refrain from revealing personal details to one another. When participants log in, each sees his or her own image, while their classmates see images and video that represent the assigned persona. The participants are unaware of this, however, and assume that the others are seeing them as they actually are.

Comments

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

"49 up" is pretty great.