Have Video Games Become The Definer Of Common Culture?

Film can no longer claim to perform a function for our whole culture when there is no whole. When Golden Age Hollywood promised to tell the story of our culture, it was usually the story of a cultural mainstream. Now it is even clearer that Hollywood’s promise is meaningful only to one, admittedly still large, audience in the plenitude. New audiences, also in the millions, seek their cultural centers elsewhere—in video games and social media. – Wired

Emotional Labor Is Uniquely Human, Right? But What If It’s Outsourced?

The real risk is that companies might now try to outsource emotional labour rather than do it in-house – just like they did with ‘brain work’. The rise of management consulting a century ago was one upshot of the advent of ‘brain work’. What might the equivalent development be for emotional labour – and will it be an unalloyed good? – Aeon