Play Journal

Think Your Way to a New Scotland

I've written a column for the Guardian's Comment is Free on whether the advance of the SNP, and the political agenda of Scottish independence, has a rich enough policy culture to support it. Anyone who's interested in the intellectual debate around the 'Scottish question' is invited to explore the many hotlinks embedded below. And anyone who knows of active Scottish bloggers or ideas networks that could be added to my own list, please don't hesitate to post them in the comments page.

Virginia Massacre: Losing the Battle of Who-Could-Care-Less

Here's a piece that was commissioned from me only a few days ago from my old paper, the Sunday Herald, an essay on the Virginia campus killings.  It's a ghastly event, and I feel for all the parents of students involved - my own daughter is about to go to an American college - but it does raise some contrarian thoughts in my head about how we can respond to certain kinds of violence in our societies. Not usual play-ethic territory, though careful readers will see the playful society hovering on the borders of the piece. But I hope it makes some sense. The unedited version is below, and I'll hotlink the references over the next few days.

Legotopia

Spent a stimulating few days in Billund, Denmark last week, delivering a keynote [powerpoint file] to Lego's 'Play to Learn' conference at their Innovation Centre (which is right next to Legoland, pleasantly enough). I got the opportunity to program a dog made out of their Lego Mindstorms technology (tried to get it to do synchronised dancing to 'Who Let the Dogs Out'. Failed). And to talk to the CEO Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who's interviewed here. Met Stuart Nolan and other Lego Serious Play advocates too. I'm also going to put up a little montage of clips taken with my battered Nokia N70 of the experience, including the coolness of Billund airport, the wackiness of the Legoland Hotel, and a few minutes of ludology from Mitch Resnick of MIT.

Throwing the Net round global poverty

The BBC's Reith Lectures started this morning, with development economist Jeffrey Sachs describing a world 'bursting at the seams'. I was privileged to be asked to be a lead questioner in the last lecture, at Edinburgh. I've written a Guardian Comment is Free column this morning, with my reactions to the lecture, and some further thoughts on how Sachs' anti-poverty agenda could be made more persuasive to Western audiences. I close with an appeal to developers and moguls in the Web 2.0 era: what are the 'life-saving' apps (rather than 'killer' apps) they could devise that would make participation and commitment to Sachs' (and others') world-healing agenda a natural part of our 'play with networks'?

Any ideas yourself, folks? (There have already been a few useful exchanges on the CiF comment pages). As a minor addendum, I really like Becky Hogge's column in Open Democracy today, which asks whether we need to solidify the value-base that underlies the open-source and participatory web:

What most agree on, though, is that the evidence in support of open standards and a generative, bottom-up internet - one that is the expression of the creative powers of the global community - is justification enough for a struggle for internet freedom. Yet...some underlying values would certainly not go amiss. As the validity of this new way of doing things asserts itself, I feel for the first time that the absence of an obvious, shared set of values might be a barrier to progress.

Don DeLillo on Today

Had to share this little Real Audio ram clip from the BBC Radio Four flagship news program, Today, interviewing Don DeLillo, my favourite modern American novelist. The occasion is the elevation of Underworld, his epic novel of 20th century American sport, politics and art, to the status of a Penguin Classic (which of course just gives me the opportunity to read it all over again, while I'm brewing up my own novel at the moment). Opening line: "I was driving a Lexus through a rustling wind..."

Play Ethics @ Channel Four

Heads up for an interesting event I'm appearing at next month, called In The Wild: Well being, the Web and the future of Education, on 10 May 2007, organised by Channel Four Education. Here's the blurb:

... A unique event which brings together young people , educators, policy makers, and representatives from the digital and broadcast media worlds into a conversation about the challenges and dilemmas facing those growing up in the UK today. In the Wild will explore some of the defining issues facing young people as make the transition to adulthood.

Featuring a mix of presentations and provocations from some leading edge thinkers and practitioners, panel discussions and facilitated conversations this event will explore among other topics:

Get Happy! - responding to the UNICEF report on children’s well being   

In the Wild – remagicalising the world through informal learning;

Living Online – work, rest and play with the Web generation

Alive and Kicking! – How schools are responding to the challenges of the ‘innovation century’

Escape from the poverty prison

I've written this short piece for the Sunday Herald, my old paper, this week, on the question of child poverty in Scotland. It's framed by this piece from another old colleague, Neil Mackay, on a really-struggling family in a towerblock in Glasgow (Neil, ever resourceful, has also put together this little film of his encounter). I know this doesn't seem like usual Play Ethic territory, but as the piece explains below, I think so much of this social dysfunction is a result of the long-term psychological deformations of industrial identity. And that a positive narrative for productivity and purposefulness - a play ethic to replace a work ethic - might be a solution.

My Collective Brain @ del.icio.us

I've just discovered this, and I have to blog it... Like many others, I use del.icio.us to catch the fragments of my surfing in a day - and also find out whether there are any other like minds out there. I just visited my del.icio.us home page, and found out (to my total delight) that I have about thirty 'fans' who are subscribing in some way to my feed. And what's even more delightful, I seem to have a page which captures all the recent postings of my 'network of fans'.

I find this very, very lovely: what seems like an instant symposia of conceptual buddies, or at least a pulsing 'collective brain' that I am already dipping into for many riches. Brillant stuff. Isn't it amazing the way the web can still surprise you?