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Data and Oil

I come here today because I’m excit­ed about data but also because I’m ter­ri­fied. I’m ter­ri­fied that we are hav­ing progress with­out cul­ture in the world of data. And as we’ve seen with these failed indus­tries before, progress with­out cul­ture does not work.

Photo of Ian Bogost during presentation,with a slide displaying the word "Fun" in large letters.

Fun

What if we arrive at fun not through expand­ing the cir­cum­stances that we’re in in order to make them less wretched, but actu­al­ly by embrac­ing the wretched­ness of the cir­cum­stances them­selves? What if, in a lit­er­al way, fun comes from impov­er­ish­ment, from wretchedness?