Playing with Reality (Paperback)

Kelly Clancy

ISBN 10: 0141998938 / ISBN 13: 9780141998930

Editore: Penguin Books Ltd, London, 2025

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Paperback. A sweeping intellectual history of games and their importance to human progressWe play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. They're also a lot of fun. But what happens when we mistake games for reality?Playing With Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behaviour and brought us to the brink of annihilation - yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics and technology. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy.Lucid, thought-provoking, and masterfully told, Playing With Reality makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Codice articolo 9780141998930

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Playing with Reality (Paperback)
• Editore: Penguin Books Ltd, London
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0141998938
• ISBN 13: 9780141998930
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: new

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

‘A dopamine hit on every page’ Marcus du Sautoy

A sweeping intellectual history of games and their importance to human progress.

We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to practice making predictions about the future. Games are thought to be older than written language, and have now become the dominant cultural media―bigger than movies, TV, music, and literature combined. They are also fun. But as neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy argues, it’s time we started taking them more seriously.

In Playing With Reality, she chronicles the riveting and hidden history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and the future of democracy. Games, Clancy shows us, have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behaviour and brought us to the brink of annihilation―yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics, and technology. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy. Games also inform the basic systems that govern our daily lives: the social media and technology that can warp our preferences, polarise us, and manufacture our desires.

Lucid, thought-provoking, and masterfully told, Playing With Reality makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature.

Informazioni sull?autore

Kelly Clancy, PhD, is a neuroscientist and physicist who has held research positions at MIT, Berkeley, University College London, and DeepMind. She develops novel brain-computer interfaces with the aim of understanding the principles of intelligence. Her writing has appeared in Wired, Harper's and the New Yorker. She spent her childhood being repeatedly murdered by her sisters in the video game GoldenEye 007.