Playgrounds of Care – Sozialisation zwischen Fleisch und Code
The playground is not a neutral space but a training ground for sociality. In the sandbox, children learn to test boundaries, negotiate roles, endure conflicts, and practice care. Play is not the opposite of seriousness; rather, it is a fundamental mode through which social realities are explored and brought into being.
But how are such spaces of experimentation changing under conditions of rapid technological development? As AI increasingly intervenes in social processes and structures communication spaces, the conditions of socialization are shifting as well. The question is not only about technical infrastructures, but about how learning processes—human and machine alike—are organized.
While AI development often follows a logic of efficiency and scale, socialization requires spaces of openness and failure. The playground thus becomes a counterfigure: a place for questioning, experimentation, and new beginnings. Play allows for the unfinished, the processual, and the unpredictable. From this tension arise central questions: What would it mean to understand AI not merely as a powerful tool, but as part of a social fabric? And what would it mean to design technological systems not for maximum performance, but for the capacity to form relationships?
This event is conceived as an open forum for discussion. Together with guests from art, computer science, and the social sciences, we will explore new forms of relationship, care, and cooperation in the age of AI.
