"Are you experienced?"

Abstract

The realm of experience has become an important aspect of the new economy. This is apparent to the extent that the promise of some new experience is attached to everything from mobile telephones, and palm pilots to whale watching excursions and sightseeing trips of Vietnam's battlefields. It is at this point that the new economy meets and morphs into something that has been called the experience economy. Using a night of bowling as a point of departure, the following text argues for a need to frame the realm of experience as a cultural phenomenon and series of practices. Rather than viewing experience as something internally bound to the individual, the article argues for a need to consider what it is that is shared as people interact under the auspices of the experience economy.