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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
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Searching... | 30000010343843 | T14.5 B76 2015 | Open Access Book | Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
An argument that pleasure is a fundamental part of why we use technology, and a framework for understanding the relationship between pleasure and technology.
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 book, Barry Brown and Oskar Juhlin examine the relationship between pleasure and technology, investigating what pleasure and leisure are, how they have come to depend on the many forms of technology, and how we might design technology to support enjoyment. They do this by studying the experience of enjoyment, documenting such activities as computer gameplay, deer hunting, tourism, and television watching. They describe technologies that support these activities, including prototype systems that they themselves developed.
Brown and Juhlin argue that pleasure is fundamentally social in nature. We learn how to enjoy ourselves from others, mastering it as a set of skills. Drawing on their own ethnographic studies and on research from economics, psychology, and philosophy, Brown and Juhlin argue that enjoyment is a key concept in understanding the social world. They propose a framework for the study of enjoyment: the empirical program of enjoyment.
Author Notes
Barry Brown is Professor in Human Computer Interaction at the University of Stockholm and Research Director of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Center. Oskar Juhlin is Professor in the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University and founder of the Mobile Life Vinn Excellence Center.
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Enjoying Machines is a humble, unassuming book whose title does not convey the depth and care with which its authors have written this study of happiness and pleasure. Brown and Juhlin (both, Stockholm University, Sweden) begin by giving readers a thorough, sound foundation in their discussion of the literature of pleasure and happiness. In the following chapters, the authors explore the major categorical concepts of happiness and pleasure. Within each chapter, Brown and Juhlin present findings utilizing standard ethnographic and ethnomethodological practices. There is very little technology proselytizing, and few buzzwords are strewn about. Instead of employing technology as a philosophical crutch, the authors use it to investigate more closely the concepts presented in each chapter, almost as a sociological probe to measure and reflect. It is quite surprising then that the appendix provides a much better ending to the book than the last chapter. Readers would have been better served if the appendix had been fleshed out with more detail and substance and placed before the last chapter. Overall, this book is a pleasure to read and has an impact disproportionate to its slim size. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Jeremy R Lauber, Briarcliffe College Library
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | p. ix |
1 Why is pleasure important? | p. 1 |
Why do we need to look at pleasure? | p. 5 |
A program | p. 9 |
A preview of the chapters | p. 11 |
2 What is enjoyment? | p. 13 |
Pleasure is worldly | p. 16 |
Pleasure is a skill | p. 20 |
Pleasuie is ordinary | p. 26 |
Pleasure is felt | p. 31 |
The empirical program of enjoyment | p. 36 |
3 Play, game, and enjoyment | p. 39 |
Concepts of game studies | p. 40 |
Counter-Strike: Shooting as if it matters | p. 45 |
Playing with animals: Big-game hunting | p. 55 |
Contrasting games and hunting | p. 62 |
4 Enjoyment in the literature | p. 65 |
Enjoyment as an event in the brain | p. 66 |
Happiness in economics and psychology | p. 70 |
The philosophy of happiness and the good life | p. 73 |
The fear of happiness in classic sociological writing | p. 77 |
Psychoanalysis of the enjoyment society | p. 82 |
Leisure studies | p. 85 |
Fun in human-computer interaction | p. 87 |
5 Pleasure in family and friends | p. 93 |
Locating the family | p. 97 |
Friendship | p. 105 |
Pleasures of family and friends | p. 113 |
6 Mobility and the flâneuring experience | p. 116 |
The concept of the flâneur | p. 117 |
Tourism as enjoyment | p. 122 |
Flaneuring and the pleasure of driving | p. 128 |
Technologies of flâneuring | p. 135 |
Recovering enjoyment in mobility | p. 138 |
7 Media | p. 141 |
Television: The box at the end of the couch | p. 143 |
Producing televised enjoyment experiences | p. 155 |
8 Toward a society of happiness | p. 165 |
Design | p. 168 |
Politics and enjoyment | p. 175 |
Closing words | p. 180 |
Appendix: Methods of enjoyment | p. 183 |
The challenge of finding pleasure | p. 184 |
Studying enjoyment | p. 185 |
What to study | p. 186 |
Four methods and their characteristics | p. 188 |
Bringing the four methods together | p. 201 |
Bibliography | p. 203 |
Index | p. 215 |