1. Materiality, mattering and
identity games in a
digitally globalising world
Patrick J. Coppock
Department of Communication and Economics
University of Modena & Reggio Emilia
ITALY
patrick.coppock@unimore.it
http://coppock-violi.com/work

2. “Mattering” & “MATTER”- some
connotations & usages:
• Well, does all this really matter in the longer term?
• Whatever‟s the matter with you now?
• I don‟t see that particular issue as mattering so very much for us all at
the moment
• The universe appears to be made up of infinite (or not) quantities of
finite matter
• This problem is seriously taxing my limited supply of grey matter
• Digitally facilitated design and manufacturing processes at a distance
are just one example of how new technologies make mattering the
immaterial possible

3. Innovation, Design &
Production
• Any chain of human invention, design, production and
cultural innovation processes can easily be conceived
of in terms of how we go about “mattering the
immaterial”, which can mean either:
• Making the immaterial matter to us
or more pragmatically (and grammatically) as:
• Making matter out of something which is immaterial
• What happens to us, and the world we live in, as a
result of our continually carrying out such activities?

4. Extended Mind
• Jon Haugland claims that:
• “broader approaches […] look at perception and action, at skillful involvement with
public equipment and social organization and do not see principled separation, but
all sorts of coupling and functional unity.”
• “mind is, therefore, not incidentally, but intimately embodied, and intimately
embedded in its world”
• “human intelligence abides in the meaningful – which, far from being restricted to
representations, extends to the entire human world”
• Andy Clark, David Chalmers ask:
• “where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?”
• “does the information in my Filofax count as part of my memory?”
• “is my cognitive state somehow spread across the Internet?”
• “better to take the broader view and see agents themselves as spread into the world”
• “certain forms of social activity might be reconceived as less akin to communication
and action, and as more akin to thought”

5. Economic Reason
• Andy Clark:
• “biological reason, I shall argue, is better conceived of as
an iterated process of adaptive response made under
extreme time pressure and exquisitely keyed to a variety
of external structures and circumstances.
• “these external circumstances serve as filters and
constraints on the spaces of possible real time responses”
• “paramount among such structures and circumstances, in
the case of human reason, are the cultural artefacts of
language and of social and economic institutions.”

6. Us all and ALL our
technologies
• Don Ihde:
• “Positively, I have argued that technologies are non-
neutral and essentially, but structurally, ambiguous.”
• “In the relationship with humans, and humans-in-culture,
technologies transform experience and its variations.”
• “Further I have argued that at the level of a cultural
hermeneutics, technologies may be variantly embedded;
the same technology in another cultural context becomes
quite a „different‟ technology”
• “Since modernity the fantasy embodiments have tended
to be technological rather than organic, animal-like or
supernatural.”

7. Us and all the rest
of it
• Donna Haraway:
• “Companion species is my effort to be in alliance with
posthumanist projects because I think species is in
question”
• “Companion species thinking inquires into the projects
that construct us a species, philosophical or otherwise”
• “Humans, wherever you track them, are products of
situated relationships with organisms, tools, much else.”
• “We are quite a crowd, at all of our temporalities and
materialities, including that of earth history and
evolution.”

8. Us and all the rest
of it
• Donna Haraway:
• “I think that training with my dog is a thinking
technology for both of us because it provokes through the
practice of us coming to learn how to focus on each other
and do something neither of us could do before and can‟t
do alone, and do it in a rule-bound way by playing a
specific game that has arbitrary rules which allow you to
play, or invent something new, something beyond
functional communication, something open.
• In fact, that‟s what play is: a game given a safe enough
space to do something that would be dangerous
otherwise”

9. The ubiquity of play
• Peppino Ortoleva:
• In the last decades new technologies, the rearrangement
of living and labour time, and other less visible cultural
factors have brought significant historical modifications
to the traditionally separate ludic area.
• New game types have emerged, and the threshold
between play and reality has been redefined to include
aspects of social life that seemed unrelated to play
activities.
• It is in the area of ludic practices, of games being played,
where new, or previously marginalized, play models have
emerged: casual games, social networking, theme parks,
surfing, reality shows etc.

10. Applied play
• Informal and formal learning in schools, at work, in urban
games to explore unknown sides of cities and make new
acquaintances
• Gamification strategies in training, marketing and
commerce
• Flying military drones that kill people in other lands
• Brainstorming sessions in business and science
• Ludic interfaces in public information and archive systems
• As a resource for facing situations requiring unplanned
adaptations or improvisations

11. Digital Technologies
& our Identities
• Personal
• v. 1.0
• Personal
• v. 2.0
• Digital
• v.1.0
• Digital (natives)
• v.2.0

12. Identity work and
play in a digital age
• Is hacking and modding video games a kind of identity
work or play?
• Are digital remix-remake activities and sharing of videos on
YouTube a kind of identity work or play?
• Is gold mining in World of Warcraft identity work or play?
• Is a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Second Life account an
avatar?
• Just how much do our avatars matter to us and our
significant others anyway?

13. Identity Work &
PLAY?

14. Identity games?

15. Identity games?

16. Identity games?

17. Identity Work &
PLAY?

18. Identity Work &
PLAY?