{"id":62872,"date":"2019-12-18T15:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T20:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=62872"},"modified":"2019-12-18T15:00:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T20:00:34","slug":"professors-in-brocks-centre-for-digital-humanities-weigh-in-on-top-tech-trends-of-the-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/12\/professors-in-brocks-centre-for-digital-humanities-weigh-in-on-top-tech-trends-of-the-decade\/","title":{"rendered":"Professors in Brock\u2019s Centre for Digital Humanities weigh in on top tech trends of the decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the world of technology, a lot can change in 10 years. A decade ago, Instagram, Fortnite and virtual reality leader Oculus had all yet to be launched.<\/p>\n

Brock University\u2019s Centre for Digital Humanities<\/a> has leading experts on the changing tech world and how far things have come.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the video game industry, Associate Professor of Game Studies<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Jason Hawreliak<\/strong> says Minecraft, which came out in 2011, set the tone for the rest of the decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in its unfinished, fairly buggy state, Minecraft<\/em> was tremendously popular,\u201d he says. \u201cGiving players access to works-in-progress is now an industry norm, and I think\u00a0Minecraft<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>is largely responsible for that. It also reaffirmed that games can be for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawreliak says video game streaming was also a major trend over the past decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cStreaming services like Twitch have dramatically transformed games into a spectator sport,\u201d he said. \u201cTied to this is the movement away from games as a product to games as a service.\u201d<\/p>\n

That shift, Hawreliak says, has transformed from buying a copy of a game, playing and finishing it to getting a copy of a game \u2014 often digitally and for free \u2014 and having it be continually updated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many ways, development on a game never really stops anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cUpdating already-released games is a major revenue model now and it will only get bigger. I think we\u2019ll see major game studios end their support for physical copies of games altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assistant Professor of Digital Media Aaron Mauro<\/strong>, who is currently writing a book about cybersecurity, says data privacy and big tech\u2019s loss of trust have also been a dominant story in the tech world over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cFears of the Y2K bug seem almost preferable to today’s online election meddling, bullying, ransomware attacks, as well as widespread surveillance and tracking campaigns waged by corporations and governments,\u201d Mauro says.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead to the next decade, he believes social and political activism will bring an increased awareness on issues such as GPS tracking, facial recognition, biometrics, artificial intelligence and data sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next generation of activists and politicians will be better able to articulate the necessary freedoms and regulations governing the internet,\u201d says Mauro, adding that Brock students are being prepared to be leaders in tech sectors. \u201cThe Centre for Digital Humanities does a fantastic job training these technically savvy citizens, ready to take on today’s seemly intractable problems that bridge simple human experience and our increasingly complicated digital lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the world of technology, a lot can change in 10 years. A decade ago, Instagram, Fortnite and virtual reality leader Oculus had all yet to be launched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":62873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,3319,4052,37,1,5],"tags":[8542,263,6495],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62874,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62872\/revisions\/62874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}