I just needed to pen this down, lest I forget.
Fields like business, medicine, and computer science seem “practical” because they are predictably useful. We can know in advance how to reap immediate gain from them. By contrast, the humanities are unpredictably useful; we cannot know in advance how they might serve us. The arts and humanities help us understand what it means to be human, no matter the contingencies of profession, economics, or current affairs. They offer insights into human experience that we need when all else fails. This is the knowledge that helps us recover from heartbreak, to make sense of tragedy, to combat the arbitrariness. They are the works that rub up against us, that comfort and bother us. We need them when we least expect it.
Taken from the blog of Ian Bogost. Mr Bogost is a professor in Georgia Tech, a videogame researcher, critic and designer. The blurb above was presented at his plenary address delivered at the first South Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo.
Fields like business, medicine, and computer science seem “practical” because they are predictably useful. We can know in advance how to reap immediate gain from them. By contrast, the humanities are unpredictably useful; we cannot know in advance how they might serve us. The arts and humanities help us understand what it means to be human, no matter the contingencies of profession, economics, or current affairs. They offer insights into human experience that we need when all else fails. This is the knowledge that helps us recover from heartbreak, to make sense of tragedy, to combat the arbitrariness. They are the works that rub up against us, that comfort and bother us. We need them when we least expect it.
Taken from the blog of Ian Bogost. Mr Bogost is a professor in Georgia Tech, a videogame researcher, critic and designer. The blurb above was presented at his plenary address delivered at the first South Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo.
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