July 16, 2004

Street Talk and Jane McGonigal

It only took three years of hearing about Jane McGonigal before we were finally in the same room together at Intel's Street Talk: An Urban Computing Happening. The conference was most magnificent because it was a gathering of some of my favorite researchers, all talking about what urban life meant, how pervasive technologies were evolving, gaming and other constructions of sociability in a digital world. Fun fun fun.

Yet, meeting Jane was just such a pleasure - it took far too long and too many misses. Everyone out there who was determined that we should meet was right-on. She's got immense amounts of spunk and she puts together creative public games; she studies performance and bridges the digital/physical divide in a total complementary way to me. Even better: she has a pet word that is awfully similar to my own. Pareidolia is "a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct." [My favorite word is apophenia: "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena."]

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Posted by zephoria at July 16, 2004 9:31 PM | TrackBack