[JoPP-Public] Serious Fun - Aarhus 2015 Workshop - Call for Participation

[Maurizio Teli]

Dear all,

Apologies for cross-posting. We want to invite you to join our workshop 
at the next Aarhus 2015 Conference on Critical Alternatives (17-21 
August 2015).

Best

M.

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Serious Fun: Designing a Game to Promote Critical Computing Practices 
Beyond Capital
A workshop at Aarhus 2015 Conference on Critical Alternatives (August, 
17-21)

Many of us grew up playing a game called Monopoly—it was about 
property, and winning other people’s money and land. But is that 
really the world we want? What if there were a different game?

The original version of the game that became Monopoly was designed to 
reward very different behavior. Its aim was to be critique of capital. 
The creator, Elizabeth Magie Philips, called it The Landlord’s Game. 
Like Ms. Philips, we want a different game, one that will reward a 
different set of alternative, critical values. So, we need to 
articulate the different values that we want to inform our future. 
Toward which values would we re-orient what motivates future societies? 
How would we institutionalize these values in our future world? What 
kinds of practices and relationships will they encourage? If these 
values were to motivate people in a game, what would the game look like?

At the Conference on Critical Alternatives, we want to make a different 
game—and we hope you will help create it.

More information at http://computing-beyond-capital.ghost.io/

How to participate

The workshop starts with a matter of fact: that contemporary societies 
are struggling to cope with the ongoing economic crisis and with the 
social problems caused by a crisis of capitalism itself. This fact 
suggests we need to articulate critical alternatives to capital in all 
aspects of social life. While computing professionals were in many ways 
responsible for the crisis, computing practices like Free Software and 
Participatory Design are also suggestive of alternative values. By 
building on these alternatives, people who compute can contribute to 
creating an alternative future.

The Landlord’s Game was a critique of capitalism. With this 
inspiration, the workshop will identify key values and practices able 
to sustain the emergence of “beyond capital” computing 
alternatives. For example, real properties in Monopoly might be 
reversed into commons promoted by alternative computing practices, and 
groups of alternative institutions (like the groups of real properties 
in Monopoly). Creating a game could create the vision of ways of living 
“beyond capital.

The workshop will build upon a group discussion of suggestions from 
participants about the appropriate set of values promoting critical 
alternatives, as articulated in papers (maximum 1000 words). In these 
papers, participants will make an argument for the inclusion of three 
values they think central for a future society, define these values, 
and describe their relations to actual computing practices. Group-work 
will then focus on how pursuit of these computing-related values can be 
built into institutions, and thus how they can be embodied in 
“chance” game activities. At the end of the workshop the game ideas 
will be combined in a mock-up of a Beyond Capital, forward-looking 
board game.

If you want to participate please send a paper with ideas about new 
values (maximum 1000 words) to the workshop organizers at the email 
address beyondcapital at openmailbox.org

Important dates:

Deadline for position paper submission (max 1000 words): May 22nd.
Notification to authors: June 7th.
Deadline for early registration to the conference: June 25th.


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Maurizio Teli, PhD
Research Fellow
Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science
University of Trento, Italy
phone: +39 335 6148320
skype: maurizio.teli
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