Virtual Reality: Truth Behind the Screen?

JC Herz, Author of Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds

College of Letters, Arts & Sciences Speaker Series: J.C. Herz
March 9 and 10, 2004 | Bovard Auditorium
General Public: $10
USC Faculty/Staff, Senior Citizens: $8
USC Students w/ Valid ID: $5

J.C. Herz is the principal of Joystick Nation Inc., a research and design practice that applies the principles of game design to products, services, and learning systems. Drawing from an understanding of ecology, online social dynamics, complex systems and information theory, J.C.'s focus is multiplayer interaction design, and systems that leverage the intrinsic characteristics of networked communication. Clients include multinational corporations, nonprofit organizations and the U.S. Defense Department.

J.C. sits on the National Research Council’s Committee on Creativity and Information Technology, and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s study group on patterns of emergent behavior in massively multiplayer persistent worlds. She is the author of two books, Surfing on the Internet (Little Brown, 1994), an ethnography of cyberspace before the web, and Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds (Little Brown, 1997), a history of videogames which traces the cultural and technological evolution of the first medium that was born digital, and how it shaped the minds of a generation weaned on Atari. J.C. published 100 essays on the grammar and syntax of game design in New York Times between 1998-2000.

via the Daily Trojan, and USC Spectrum