The Sunday Play

A sunday paper is always a good opportunity to measure how 'play' is doing in the culture. The Observer this week was almost a test-case. Play-as-power came alive in the Hutton reports: there was even a "Key Players"guide. On the flip-side of that page, a piece about the new dating games sweeping the nation. In the Review section, an interview with the Artificial Intelligence pioneer Steve Grand, who started out his quest by trying to create a new kind of comptuer game, "simulations in which figures appear to make their own decisions with the benefit of learned knowledge" (play-as-imagination, mental play). And the cover story in this section is about a journalist's experience of "faking it" as a tv producer, playing with the idea of work itself. In the "Life" section, a story about depression finds the solution in a combination of "play and pray" - workouts and sports, plus meditation. I could go on... but given that it was the Observer that first broke The Play Ethic story in October 2000, I shouldn't be that surprised.