The Great Seduction

Keen On… Jane McGonigal: Is Reality Broken?

Yes, it is. At least according to gaming guru, Jane McGonigal, the author of the hit new book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. For McGonigal, who began gaming as a ten-year-old and is now Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future, reality needs to be refashioned as a game in order to build our self-confidence and make us less fearful of real world failure.

“If I can do it in a game,” McGonigal told me when she came into the TechCrunch studio last month, “then I can do it real life too.” Gaming has certainly changed McGonigal’s life. After suffering a serious brain injury in 2009, gaming helped cure her depression. She fell in love playing an electronic game and spent the first month of her marriage playing games (isn’t marriage, in reality, one long game?) She even thinks that gaming has improved her sex life, suggesting that the subversiveness of electronic gaming gives her a “thrill.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keen On… Jane McGonigal: Is Gaming the Opium of the People?

Is gaming like religion – a way of taking our minds off reality and indulging in unrealizable fantasies?

Not according to Jane McGonigal, one of electronic gaming’s most articulate evangelists. According to McGonigal, gaming is real rather than a fantasy and it not only makes us better people but also improves the world. Indeed, McGonigal even suggests that we might need a 21st century political party which builds its message around the promise of gaming.

 

 

 

 

Keen On… Bruce Sterling: What Comes After the Future?

So what comes after the future? I asked Bruce Sterling at SXSW.

But, for Bruce, the future is really the past. “I like narratives,” he told me, while explaining why the most “effective” futurists are good historians. So perhaps, using this logic, what comes after the future is history.

And Bruce is certainly an effective futurist as well as a good historian. Which is why when I asked him about today’s Internet obsession with “the social,” he riffed with dark euphoria about the history of socialism as well as what it’s like to be a 15-year-old kid with no knowledge of the past.

Check out yesterday’s interview with Bruce when he explains why hactivism isn’t compatible with democracy and what the difference is between gothic high tech and favela chic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keen On… Bruce Sterling: “Network Society Isn’t Compatible With Democracy”

Appropriately, Bruce Sterling closed SXSW this year. It’s appropriate because after Bruce, there really isn’t much to say. He’s just about the smartest and funniest historical science fictional writer in the business. And the edgiest too – even though he’s built a professorial façade to disguise the punk in him.

So it was a huge honor to catch the darkly euphoric Bruce in Austin where he talked to me about his upcoming new book Gothic High Tech and Favella Chic, on why “hactivism” isn’t democracy and why he finds Sarah Palin “super interesting.”

And stay tuned for tomorrow when Bruce tells us what comes after the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dust-Up: What's the true impact of illegal downloading on jobs and the arts?

On the final day* of our piracy Dust-Up, Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, and Andrew Keen, advisor to Arts and Labs, discuss the impact of illegal downloading on the economy and the arts through the lens of copyright legislation. Do we need new laws or simply new approaches within the current legal framework?

 

 

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Dust-Up: Should the entertainment industry accept piracy as a cost of doing business?

In the first installment of our piracy Dust-Up, Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, and Andrew Keen, advisor to Arts and Labs, debated how big a risk piracy poses to the entertainment industry. Voicing the opinion of many Internet users and online entrepreneurs, Feld said it was time for the industry to adapt. Keen disagreed and argued for more legal protection,  not just for Hollywood but for the independent filmmakers and copyright holders who'll be driven away if piracy continues.

Today they face off on whether piracy should be accepted as a cost of doing business.

 

 

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Dust-Up: How big a risk does piracy pose to the entertainment industry?

Will illegal downloading drive independent filmmakers and, eventually, the entertainment industry out of business? Absolutely, says Andrew Keen, the author of the upcoming "Digital Vertigo: An Anti-Social Manifesto" and the advisor to Arts and Labs, a coalition of entertainment and technology companies and some of their leading tech-industry partners. Not only is piracy crippling the industry as a whole, Keen contends, but it's hurting the little guy, the artists; and he's worried that without stricter laws, piracy will eventually drive away independent filmmakers because they can no longer afford to tell the important stories that help to influence our culture.

On the other side of the debate is Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based advocacy group that frequently opposes the entertainment industry on copyright issues. Speaking for many Internet users and online entrepreneurs, Feld argues that the entertainment industry ought to accept the new reality and adapt.

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