The domineering theme at this year’s Etech conference was magic, as in “sufficiently advanced technology.” And I mean domineering– except for a few sessions that were literally about magic and magicians, the theme turned out to be an elusive abstraction that many of the speakers had to really stretch (if not engage in embarrassing contortions) to reach. I see how the idea of the theme was attractive, but it really didn’t work very well.

There were two real themes: fun and games (aka pleasure and happiness) and the re-emergence of philosophy and humanities as an integral part of the technological progress. How’s that for abstraction?

Last year was about attention– a lot of the talks about gaming and game mechanics were about why we pay attention. Which leads inevitably to something we need a lot more of, and may see next year: cognitive science and neuroscience. We might pay attention to increase productivity, but ultimately we are pleasure-seeking organisms. We want happiness. We want satisfaction. Educational gamers tend to focus on the information, leading to game horrors like the Unreal Tournament based Chemistry solving game I once saw. We need to get back to remembering why people play games– and there is a lot of research out there that is very specific about those mechanics– and figure out how we can apply them rather than adopting top-level conventions based on appearance and sticking academic content in the midst of it.

I also enjoyed the resurgence of the humanities– and philosophy– into the discussion. I believe more than ever that we are in the middle of a culture-change that is on par with the emergence of science and rationalist thinking and then the industrial revolution and mechanical apparatus. Orienting ourselves to this radically changing environment in which we will have ubiquitous smart objects, ambient networking, promiscuous presence demands rethinking the very foundation of our thought and approach to the divide and connections between us and the world. “The New Animism” was an apt title– after many thousands of years of treating inanimate objects as if they were alive, then forging a solid divide between “us” and “things,” now we are faced with things that are much like us and our presence mediated by and represented by those very things. It’s fascinating.

In more than one way I was disappointed with this year’s conference, which I will write about later, not just to bitch, but with ideas for making it better. It might just be a function of having been to three of them; it might be an inevitable fact that innovative conferences have a lifecycle just like many other activities. But I still got a lot out of the experience, and while I will look closely at the schedule next year before opting to come again (some other conferences are looking pretty attractive: Web 2.0– or whatever it becomes, Supernova, TED– if I could wrangle an invite), it remains a good option. As usual, the most valuable aspects of the conference are the connections made with other attendees… and my yearly chance to let my inner geek free and mingle with others like me, which isn’t something I often get to do within the academic context.