Biographical Information

J.C. Herz

J.C. Herz sits on the National Research Council's Committee on Creativity and Information Technology, as well as the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's study group on patterns of emergent behavior in massively multiplayer persistent worlds. After graduating from Harvard in 1993 with a B.A. in Biology and Environmental Studies, Ms. Herz wrote Surfing on the Internet (Little Brown, 1994) and then Joystick Nation: How Video-games Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds (Little, Brown 1997). She was the first computer games critic on the New York Times and is now producing a documentary on the history of video games for PBS. At present Ms. Herz is the principal of Joystick Nation Inc., a research and design practice that applies the principles of game design to products, services, and learning systems.