CfP: "The Multifaceted Relationship between Fear and Technology"
Call for Papers "The Multifaceted Relationship between Fear and Technology"
Interdisciplinary Workshop, 10–12 October 2018, Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Human Development, Berlin
Alexander
Gall (Deutsches Museum, Munich), Martina Heßler
(Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, Hamburg), Bettina Hitzer (MPI for Human
Development, Berlin), Karena Kalmbach (TU Eindhoven), Anne Schmidt (MPI
for Human Development, Berlin), Andreas Spahn (TU Eindhoven)
The
aim of the workshop is to hash out various interdisciplinary approaches
to conceptualizing the relationship between technology and fear.
Computer games provide an example that illustrates well how complex and
multifaceted this relationship can be:
According to a Bitkom
survey conducted in 2017, 43 percent of Germans over the age of 14
regularly play computer games. Every year, more and more visitors attend
the Berlin Radio Show (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin/IFA). And
every year, people spend millions of euros on video games and other
forms of electronic entertainment. These findings are just some of the
many indices of the widespread fascination with technology. But outside
the technology pages of the papers and the internet, discussions about
computer games often foreground a feeling markedly different from
fascination, namely, fear. Some of the fears discussed are familiar,
recalling the sorts of fears that cultural critics of the past summoned
up to resist the arrival of new media. However, the example of computer
games does more than give occasion to think about continuities; it also
demonstrates that the relationship between technology and fear is
complex and multifaceted.
Every time a young person commits a mass
shooting, politicians, teachers, psychologists and journalists debate
about whether regularly playing first-person shooter games had a part in
it. More generally, fears that such games spark or strengthen a
tendency to violence are commonly voiced. On a different level, many
parents fear that the daily consumption of computer games might hinder
their child’s cognitive and emotional development. Or is the real danger
an addiction to gaming, as some members of the American Psychiatric
Association proposed in 2017 when they formulated the new diagnosis
Internet Gaming Disorder? In other spheres of society, experts and
laypeople alike subscribe to the notion that computer games harbor the
danger of a “substance-independent dependency.” Around the world,
clinics and self-help groups are being set up to help heal the addicted.
Gamers themselves present us with yet another form of fear, in the
sense that many of them enjoy games built on an intense experience of
fear, such as horror games like the popular Outlast. What is so
attractive about this kind of play-fear? Is it a source of pleasure? Or
can gaming be used as a kind of medicine to put a damper on everyday
fears? For years, psychologists, neurologists and doctors have been
grappling with the possible therapeutic dimensions of artificially
invoking fear in playful settings. Computer games designed for this
purpose are supposed to help people control their physiological
reactions of fear in certain situations or overcome real phobias through
playing in virtual worlds. There is even a special genre of
cancer-killer shooters intended to help people sublimate fears of
illness into positive forms of resistance. For those afraid of losing
their mental sharpness, there are computer games for “mental jogging”
designed to hem cognitive aging.
The example of computer games
makes clear how fear can be tied up with technology in manifold, often
contradictory ways. Fear can be a reaction to the proliferation and use
of certain technologies and the consequences of such use; indeed, it is
this kind of fear of technology that has dominated extant research on
the subject. In most research, fear is treated in relation or opposition
to other emotions, such as hope, fascination, pleasure, concern, and
the search for security. But feelings of fear can also be inextricably
bound up with the use of technology, and can even be desired and sought
out.
These facts toss up a number of questions that have until now
received little attention from researchers, such as: What role does
knowledge about fear, its physiology and its functioning play in the
development of certain technologies? How does marketing research
evaluate and measure the need for fear and the fear of fear? Finally,
how have specific understandings of what fear is shaped the development
of certain technologies, making them into “emotional things” whose
materiality alters or produces experiences of and approaches to fear?
Can game designers deliberately calculate the addictive potential of
games? And if so, is it because they have precise knowledge about the
fears of consumers? How can the degree to which technologically produced
immersive experiences are convincing enough to be held as real be
determined, explained, and studied? And to what extent has the gaming
industry taken on a leading role in other branches? What role does the
exchange of knowledge between various industries and fields of research
play, and what effects do these exchanges have? How do marketing and the
media use and produce fear when trying to pave the way for the
implementation of certain forms of technology? Does the fear of
technology adhere to a similar logic in the fields of commercial
production, private consumption and politics, or does it take on
different patterns in different fields? What role do gender, age, social
background, ethnicity, and other social categories play in the
development, production, marketing, circulation and consumption of
technologies associated with fear?
- Technologies of communication and entertainment
- Security technologies
- Infrastructures
- Technologies in medicine, care and therapy
- Processes of digitalization and automation
In
order to give maximum time to interdisciplinary discussion, we ask
contributors to keep their talks to no more than 15 minutes. This will
provide opportunity for participants from other disciplines to comment
on contributions. Accordingly, each participant will be asked to provide
an oral comment on another contribution.
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. There is no registration fee.
If you are interested in participating, please send an application to cfp-emotions@mpib-berlin.mpg.de by 30 April 2018
and attach a single word-file containing a short CV and a
paper-proposal of not more than 700 words. All applicants will be
informed regarding acceptance of their proposals by 15 June 2018.
Contact Info:
Bettina Hitzer
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany