RIT'S Lab for Social Computing

The Changing Relationship Between Games and Institutions:

What makes games so potent a site for institutional projects today, and what may we learn by setting games against the two most well-established cultural forms for this work through history: ritual and bureaucracy? By considering what has changed to make the domestication (as it were) of games possible, and also reflecting on how these other forms have been put to work by institutions, we can begin to chart the landscape ahead for games and ask key questions about both how to understand this transformation and what issues of policy and ethics it raises.

Kevin Slavin came to RIT’s Idea Factory on October 18th, and of course he had quite a presentation. Kevin’s talk consisted of ideals about luck, chance, and how people are so drawn to these basic things.

As a co-founder of Area/Code, which is now the New York office of Zynga, he’s a very accomplished mathematician. He has also given a TED Talk, entitled “How Algorithms Shape The World”, which goes into how complex systems of numbers like Wall Street can be tracked and analyzed.

Kevin’s talk can be seen here.