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The Fun in Function (its a working title)

Thesis Abstract v.0.5.

We live in a networked world with increasingly blurry lines between our physical and virtual lives. Our

computation-centric society is more orderly, more systematic, and more governed by algorithms than everbefore. Technologists often rush forward, in the name of progress, without looking back to reflect upon the

effects (or missed opportunities) in their wake. Focusing on the how instead of the why these new

pioneers develop faster and better ways of systemizing, quantifying, streamlining, and tagging our world.

As new algorithms get pumped out faster and faster, ubiquitous networked computing pervades

everything from our built environment to our front pockets. What effect does this have on our lives?

Technology has fundamentally altered the separation of work and play.1 The idea of work was once

confined to the tangible real world, while play was allowed to exist in the intangible imaginary realm. For

many of us who work in the world of the intangible, work is often no longer bound to the rules of reality,

making it particularly ripe for hacking. What was once a serious and quantitatively true system can

become a space for collaborative interaction, especially within the context of our rapidly advancing

technology. Our algorithms already create questionably objective truths that shape our real world, from

finances to culture to terrain.2 Thus, a new system can emerge that is open to a wide range of truths

created by humans that alsoshape the world we live in. But because the systems weve created work

faster than us as individuals, well have to work together to keep up with them.

Within the ordinary world, both physical and virtual, there are already magic circles3

ripe for the picking

everywhere. Being subject to arbitrary (and often absurd) rules and constraints, these areas are subject

to new possibilities bound only by imagination. But what kind of possibilities are we aspiring to create?

Within these new systems that make our lives more efficient, what will be the role of the human? As

algorithmic thinking becomes an increasingly valuable skill, we must create space for capricious thinking

to flourish as well. With the inconveniences and obstacles of life being cured away with technology, will

there still be space for human intervention, improvisation, and interpretation? What type of work will we

value?

While we seem to believe that play is the opposite of work, a good game actually invites players to do

more hard work by tackling unnecessary obstacles in an interesting way. The creativity of play comes not

Jayne Vidheecharoen. www.tinypaperclips.com

1 Margo Hilbrecht .Changing Perspectives on the WorkLeisure Relationship.

2 Kevin Slavin. Ted Talk: How algorithms shape our world

3 Johan Huizinga. Homo Ludens

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from removing constraints but by reinterpreting and finding new possibility within the constraints.4 Looking

at our real world magic circles through the lens of potential opportunities for play, we can find new ways

to reshape it, with goals other than just profit and efficiency. Since peoples behaviors are heavily

influenced by their environment, with this power we also have to take responsibility for the type of values

or behaviors were promoting.

5

Its also important to keep the system open enough for individual agency,

allowing new possibilities to emerge and raise new questions about what we currently accept as fact or

normalcy.6

With these values in mind, I want to mash up our everyday spaces and technologies as a way to create

alternative uses for them, challenging arbitrary systems of so-called technological and cultural progress. I

want to hack together our existing real and virtual worlds as way to explore (and exploit) the absurd

assumptions that both hold these worlds together and keep them apart. By encouraging the co-existence

of creative free play in both our digital and physical lives, I am hoping to create new spaces of possibility

for others to build upon and reshape.

Jayne Vidheecharoen. www.tinypaperclips.com

4 Jane McGonigal. Reality is Broken

5 Jonathan Harris. World Building in a Crazy World.

6 McKinzie Wark. A Hacker Manifesto.

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