Technological innovation in the Leisure Society

Author: Marieke van Voornveld is lecturer of Leisure & Events Management at Willem de Kooning Academy.

It was already predicted in the middle of the 20th century; we are moving towards a Leisure Society. Technological innovation ensured that we had more time for a good conversation or a nice hobby. The trend did indeed develop as predicted, but leisure activities have also changed. We are currently experiencing a revival of the Leisure Society, now powered by robotics and machine learning. Artificial Intelligence is even taking over knowledge-intensive jobs. As human beings, we end up on the sidelines of the labour market. Who will have a job and who will not? And shouldn't we introduce a Basic Income so that we can all continue to participate in this leisure economy? In the meantime, we are having a great time with new gadgets and tech-driven services and experiences. 
 
Parallel to this Leisure Society, various metaverses are developing, new parallel living worlds that are experienced from hobby level to performative leisure in gaming and entertainment, among other things. The working environment is also becoming increasingly hybrid. Will Liquid Leisure soon be intertwined with mixed reality? 

The technology programme
One of the afternoon programmes of the conference focused on the technology perspective of the Future of Leisure. Technology can make societal changes easier, more efficient, more experiential. But is technology only enabling, providing opportunities or is it also disturbing? Leisure Industry is a human-intensive industry; can humans easily be replaced by robots? When we look at technology; do we want an ‘Era of Change’, or do we need a ‘Change of Era’? 

The main goal of the programme was to think and talk about these questions with each other through the lens of technology. As we had all heard a lot of interesting insights that morning we were already inspired, but we had some more inspiration planned for the participants.

To begin with, our location was very inspiring; it was the big XR stage, the eXtended Reality screen. Ella Bats, the XR stage manager of BUas, gave us a visual presentation of the possibilities in leisure with this special screen. It gave us insights into creating a much better experience and also the sustainability features of it; for example no more travelling necessary to shoot films. 

Subsequently, Jeroen Steenbakkers, CEO at Argaleo, told us all about the way data can contribute to better insights into leisure behaviour. He gave us multiple examples where the use of technology could help with a better customer experience. Martijn Mulder, POPLIVE researcher, told us all about the leisure experience of music; the difference between live and digital music experiences. 

Create Future Cities
In between the inspirational talks, the participants were divided into groups to create their shared vision of the future leisure city. Some of them created a Future City in Minecraft. House of E-sports (Rotterdam) created a base city from where we could build. Some appealing futuristic leisure cities were created here. House of E-sports also offered several VR experiences; when the participants wanted to step out of the programme for a moment, they could play some virtual games. This is also a technology which we can rely on in the future.

At the end of the day, we had some creative and interesting things to expose. The main obstacle that most of us came across, was the fact that it is very difficult to look 30 years into the future when it comes to technological innovation. We created virtual cities in 2050 where 70% of the world's population live in cities, where virtual reality and platform algorithms are used. In these cities of the future, we are not only served and operated by robots, but we can also marry them. Fortunately, thanks to hologram technology, we can also meet with family and friends all over the world. We eat jellyfish and cultured meat. And the pressure in the city keeps increasing; will technology save our cities? Only the future can tell.

Read more articles of Uncover about the Future of Leisure in this link.