Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World

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A sweeping intellectual history of games and their importance to human progress We play games to learn about the world, to understand our minds and the minds of others, and to make predictions about the future. They're also a lot of fun. But what happens when we mistake games for reality Playing With Reality explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behaviour and brought us to the brink of annihilation - yet still underlies basic assumptions in economics, politics and technology. We used games to teach computers how to learn for themselves, and now we are designing games that will determine the shape of society and future of democracy. Lucid, thought-provoking, and masterfully told, Playing With Reality makes the bold argument that the human fascination with games is the key to understanding our nature.

Reviews

With the blazing mind of a scientist and the keen eye of a poet, Clancy emerges as one of the most important new writers of her generation -- David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Stanford, NYT bestselling author INCOGNITO and LIVEWIRED
A book to get the neurons firing. As a passionate game player I loved reading a neuroscientists perspective on the role games have played in humanitys attempts to navigate the game of life. A dopamine hit on every page -- Marcus du Sautoy
PLAYING WITH REALITY is the critical history of games I've been waiting for. Fast-paced and enjoyable, you'll never look at a pair of dice or your smartphone the same again -- Malcolm Harris
A gripping narrative that reveals why games matter and just how powerful they can be. It should be required reading for anyone who develops games and everyone who plays them -- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, Inc.
Playing With Reality is as surprising, and as delightful, as the many games it analyzes. From ancient games of chance to the latest advances in AI, Kelly Clancy has written the definitive account of how weas individuals and as a societylearn through play -- Steven Johnson, author of EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU and WONDERLAND
A wide-ranging examination of how games have shaped the world... Clancy weaves a cautionary tale about what happens when human fascination with games translates into a belief in the power of simplified world models that are often untethered from reality... a rewarding read that raises important questions about who defines the rules of the game-inspired systems that dominate modern life - and whether we should automatically accept those rules -- Jeremy Hsu * New Scientist *
Life is full of games but if we don't know we're playing, there's every chance games are playing us. Whether they are the games hidden in politics, war, business or in everyday work and play Clancy will have you asking who set the rules and who stands to benefit. Playing with Reality is as addictive and engrossing as the games Clancy lucidly describes -- Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of THE MAN FROM THE FUTURE: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
Clancy weaves a clear-eyed account of games from ancient historythey predate written language, she tells usto the modern world of computers and the Internet Clancy carefully puts these historical moments and developments in context. This approach is particularly pleasurable when it takes the form of deep dives into specific games contextualizes and clarifies the upshot of losing perspective -- Carmen Maria Machado * Scientific American *
A history of how games and game theory have changed the world by turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book * Economist *
A sweeping investigation The history fascinates, and Clancys sophisticated analysis highlights the dangers of overgeneralizing from games to reality... Readers wont want to put this down * Publisher's Weekly *

Author Bio

Kelly Clancy, PhD, is a neuroscientist and physicist who has held research positions at MIT, Berkeley, University College London, and DeepMind. She develops novel brain-computer interfaces with the aim of understanding the principles of intelligence. Her writing has appeared in Wired, Harper's and the New Yorker. She spent her childhood being repeatedly murdered by her sisters in the video game GoldenEye 007.