Guest Speaker: Barry Brown

Enjoying Machines

Barry Brown, Mobile Life, University of Stockholm

The dominant feature of modern technology is not how productive it makes us, or how it has revolutionized the workplace, but how enjoyable it is. We take pleasure in our devices, from smartphones to personal computers to televisions. Whole classes of leisure activities rely on technology. How has technology become such an integral part of enjoyment? In this talk I will draw on my forthcoming book  to argue for how pleasure is fundamentally social in nature.  Not only do we enjoy ourselves with others; we need to be with others to understand what might be enjoyable.  I'll cover our ethnographic work on pleasure - computer gameplay, deer hunting, tourism, and television watching, as well as putting the concept of enjoyment into a theoretical and historical context.