Miguel Sicart, Associate Professor at the Center for Computer Game Research, IT University Copenhagen
Computers have significantly affected the economy and culture of post-industrial societies. We are living an information revolution where all kinds of data are produced and processes by ubiquitous computers. This Information Age is also a ludic era: from the growth of videogames as major economic and cultural industries, to phenomena like gamification, this century is being defined by the way it plays with computers. In this talk, I appropriate Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens concept to argue that at the heart of the information age there is a play drive that shapes and helps define computational culture. By extending Huzinga's work with concepts from the Philosophy of Information, Postphenomenology, and Agential Realism, I will argue that understanding the ludic drive in computational culture allows us to draw relevant insights from different phenomena, from videogames to gamification, from Internet trolling to e-sports and the quantified self.
