Archive

Performing States

We have now in twen­ty years moved half the world’s pop­u­la­tion, give or take, to one city. And we all live in one city. And we keep walk­ing out into the street and get­ting past­ed by trams. And we don’t even under­stand what the trams are. We not only do not know how to live togeth­er online, we don’t even real­ly under­stand that it’s a problem.

Cyborg Anthropology and the Evaporation of the Interface

When you look at your online pro­file, is that real­ly you? It’s a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of you that can be act­ed on when you’re not there. But where do you end and the machine begins? The thing is that humans and tech­nol­o­gy have coe­volved with each oth­er over time, being very very cocre­ative. We have sur­vived because of tech­nol­o­gy, and tech­nol­o­gy has sur­vived because of us.

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?