So you'd like to know if your wonderful online romantic partner is, indeed, whom he (or she) says he (or she) is? There is a new online game which claims it can help you make that determination. And the team of Georgia Tech researchers who developed the game are more than ready to prove it.
They derived it from both an old home game, the Imitation Game, and the long-running television quiz show To Tell The Truth, drawing mostly on principles developed by the creator of the former, British mathematician Alan Turing, half a century ago. And they've developed a game to help you decipher gender, age, race, nationality, native region, or any cultural marker you desire.
Called the Turing Game, it's a multi-player game challenging players to find phonies by analyzing the content and style of their written communications - kind of like handwriting analysis on a high-tech, on-screen level. "People underestimate the power of the Internet in making issues of identification salient," says co-creator Joshua Berman to Wired.
"Online communication is becoming an increasing part of people's lives, and there are different views of what this means," says another co-creator, Georgia Tech assistant professor Amy Bruckman, to the magazine. "Some would say that, when we go online, we become pure intellect, and we bring nothing with us. Others would say that's naïve - we're the same people online as offline."
Wired says Berman is using the Turing Game as a research tool for his doctoral dissertation, which is looking to understand the relationship between public and Internet identities and explore how virtual communities operate.
"Many Internet-savvy people say that men treat women differently online, and we understand that at different levels," Bruckman tells Wired. "Some things you can't just tell someone about. They have to experience it to understand it and realize the implications."
The game is free and runs on any Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0 system. It features a panel of people, all but one taking on a false identity, with viewers putting forth questions to determine who's lying.
You register online to play during scheduled game times, with responses posted on the Web at once. And you have to sign an agreement to take part in the Berman research project.
The co-creators tell Wired that about 1,400 players from every continent except Africa, ages 18-89, have signed up to play the Turing Game.
