The Unsimulated Room

observation — attributed to Colja Dams

The current cultural condition is one of accelerating simulation: everything is increasingly mediated, approximated, generated. The one thing left that is genuinely not simulated is the room where people are actually present together, where what happens between them is not optimized by a model or produced by an algorithm. That room is the product the gathering economy has always sold. Dams's specific observation is that the industry has spent decades building toward a moment that has now arrived: the most powerful technology in the world cannot produce the one thing the industry's central product delivers.

Industry Definition / Live Experience

simulation, real presence, gathering economy thesis