Rome, 15-23
March
2008


Being, Appearing, and Communicating: Entertainment and Happiness in a Multi-Medial Society

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Architecture and Aesthetics
  • Architecture and Aesthetics
  • Videogames and Urban life: SimCity.
  • New spaces “without” space.
  • New technologies and new paths for art.
Engineering
  • Videogames and technology
  • Diverse videogame platforms.
  • What will the videogame of the future be like?
  • New game interfaces.
  • The industry of audiovisual leisure.
Law
  • Piracy and videogames.
  • Security on the Internet: “Access denied to minors”.
  • The protection of intellectual property.
  • Violence and videogames.
  • Protecting the truth.
Economy
  • Profitability of videogames.
  • Internet: how can it be profitable.
  • Real markets in the virtual world.
  • How users are converted into producers.
Medicine
  • Chatting on-line: connected or addicted?
  • Pathologias that arise from the abuse of video games.
  • How new technologies create dependence.
  • Ergonomics and health.
  • Adolescent obesity: do new technologies make us fat?
Culture
  • The globalization of relaxation.
  • Diversion and anonymity.
  • Chat-rooms as virtual communities.
  • Videogames as social space.
  • Interactivity in games and passivity in life.
  • Virtual reality: feeling or thinking?.
  • The social models that are presented in videogames.
  • Parallel lives: creating perfect personas on-line.
Communication
  • Cinema seen as a videogame and videogames produced like cinema.
  • Documentaries and new media.
  • When special effects become more important than history.
  • Videogames’ influence on the way movies are made.
  • Digital television.
  • YouTube: the public has become a producer.
Advertising
  • Advertising in videogames.
  • Multimedia synergies for creating new markets.
  • Interactive advertising.
  • Personalized advertising.
  • On-line advertising.
  • Will “spam” be the ruin of email?
Education
  • Videogames as a tool for learning new languages.
  • Videogames as an educational tool.
  • Playing videogames alone: what are the costs?
  • Virtual families.
  • Virtual friends.
  • Celular phones as status symbol.
  • Bullying and new technologies.
  • Having anything with the click of a mouse: towards an effortless culture.
Interdisciplinary questions
  • Telephones as pass-time.
  • Pocket-sized television.
  • MP3, iPod, etc: what happens when you can have music anywhere, anytime?
  • The significance of MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role playing games).
Transfer in Rome