Details

About this workshop

🧩 Future(s) of Work…. and Play

Global discourse around adoption of technology has largely focused on solutions to AI-driven unemployment, the implications of the augmentation and/or replacement of humans in particular sectors, and the need to reshape education and to re-train or up-skill labour forces. This is an essential conversation, but in isolation, it might limit our understanding of the social harms or the generative potentials of new technologies.

Together with Digital Asia Hub, we want to expand the discourse, by expanding the lens from Work to an exploration of Play as a complementary notion. Some of the most promising developments in machine learning have crossed over from play (DeepMind’s AlphaGo beating the world champion, Lee Sedol) to science (protein folding) and healthcare (kidney injury diagnosis). Equally, the qualities that characterize gaming and play communities, such as collaboration, generativity, and interoperability, are being seen as resilient, adaptive skills for the future.

Against this backdrop, we are hosting an in-person workshop in Bangkok, Thailand from 5-7 December 2022 and invited experts from diverse backgrounds to join this highly interactive and collaborative workshop. 

🎭 Themes

The workshop is focused on expanding mainstream discourse, by expanding the lens from Work to an exploration of ‘Play’. Some of the themes we intend to explore include:

Objectivity and Reality: Millions of people spend more than half their waking hours looking at a phone, computer, or other device. What does an even further deepening of life into digital spaces mediated by VR/AR etc. mean for our sense of self and reality?

Personalization and Identity: the business model of the Internet relies heavily on data gathering, sorting, behavioural analysis, and extrapolation to personalize content. If one is never exposed to anything one doesn’t already agree with, how is identity and personality self-determined, rather than other-constructed? Can games and play – particularly ones involving role playing and avatars - be used to increase empathy, tolerance and harmony, and overcome tribalism and polarization?

Decentralization and Autonomy: where are decentralised networks, popularly referred to as Web 3.0, re-drawing the relationship between people and platforms to centre and empower people rather than co? Where are they creating bigger problems than the ones they solve? How can we bring awareness to learnings and insight from Web 1.0 and 2.0 to help generate early warnings to keep us from repeating the same mistakes in Web 3.0?

Institutions and Rules: blockchain-based alternatives to financial systems and markets are spawning new institutions e.g. Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) and raising questions about the future of institutions such as the nation-state. What are the oversight mechanisms, rules and other mechanisms are emerging as alternatives to the executive, legislative and judicial systems?

This workshop is a collaborative effort, with many ideas generated through the workshop and the expert cohort, rather than in a predetermined, top-down manner. Projects and research questions that come out of this workshop may also contribute to a longer research agenda and set of activities in 2023.

This workshop is organised by Digital Asia Hub and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Political Dialogue Asia. 

About Digital Asia Hub 

The Digital Asia Hub is an independent, non-profit Internet and society research think tank based in Hong Kong. Incubated by The Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a diverse group of academic, civil society, and private sector partners, the Hub provides a non-partisan, open, and collaborative platform for research, knowledge sharing and capacity building related to Internet and Society issues with focus on digital Asia. The Hub also aims to strengthen effective multi-stakeholder discourse, with both local and regional activities, and will contribute to – and itself serve as a node of – a larger network of academic organizations: the Global Network of Internet & Society Centers (the “NoC”).