Elephant paths
Sometimes “elephant paths” do not please people. As I explained here, this terms refers to paths that is formed in space by people making their own paths and shortcuts. Look at what happened in the “Parc des bastions” in Geneva:
Why do I blog this? from the user point of view, an elephant is interesting because it shows some explicit traces of people’s intentions in space. Therefore, when you see these fences that tries to prevent people from having a shortcut, this makes me wondering whether what will happen. And since fences are only put on one side of the elephant path, there will be some interesting traces because people from the other side will still keep using it and change their trajectory only at the end of the path.
Now, if we think about virtual worlds, there are of course research works about walkthrough and shortcuts in video games (see Axel Stockburger’s paper about discursive walkthrough which is somewhat related to that). But is there any instance of counter-elephant paths measures in MMORPG?
February 11th, 2007 at 1:02 am
My dad worked at a brand new university in the 1950s. Instead of planning and installing sidewalks upfront, they let one school year pass and then paved over the trails that emerged as students used the campus. (It was in a climate with no snow.)
October 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Hi! I tried to find your definition to elephant path, but it seems to missing from the server. I work with a project called Elephant Paths (www.elephantpaths.net). The project has been hybernating for some time now, but I’m moving the content of it to Tagzania right at the moment. I’m glad I found your blog!!