The Play Ethic

From bargaining to lending

Mega-bright Finn Jyri Engeström - a stalwart of the Helsinki future community Aula - predicts the next model of net economics. Which seem to involve... no economics at all:

It was the portal-driven Web of the 1990s that brought forth the revolution in retail and classifieds. This time it will be different. The shift to a blog-driven Web can set in motion a new, lively circulation of pre-owned products among networks of friends who play with the dynamics of social capital, not financial capital. Where Amazon pioneered the Web’s retail layer, and eBay pioneered the bargaining layer, a service like Mediachest could pioneer a new lending layer in product circulation.

'Networks of friends who play with the dynamics of social capital, not financial capital'. If you've ever done the Helsinki groove (here's my experience), you'll know how credible that feels. But if Linux and Nokia can happen once, what can happen again?

The Doctor is out, but may linger

William Greider reminds us why the Dean campaign was killed by the media - quotes like this:

There is something about human beings that corporations can't deal with and that's our soul, our spirituality, who we are. We need to find a way in this country to understand - and to help each other understand - that there is a tremendous price to be paid for the supposed efficiency of big corporations. The price is losing the sense of who we are as human beings.

These digital citizens won't go away, as Greider says. Expect the politically unexpected.

Malware revolution

The Enemy Within, part one and two. Comprehensive piece on virus makers from the Observer (whose practice is now called 'malware'). As ever, I'm keen to note the ethical prescriptions of players, even ones as dangerous and fissile as these:

They insist they have a right to explore their interests. Indeed, a number of them say they are making the world a better place, because they openly expose the weaknesses of computer systems. When Philet0ast3r or Mario or Mathieson finishes a new virus, they say, they will immediately email a copy of it to anti-virus companies. That way, they explained, the companies can program their software to recognise and delete the virus should some script kiddie ever release it into the wild. This is further proof that they mean no harm with their hobby, as Mathieson pointed out. On the contrary, he said, their virus writing strengthens the 'immune system' of the internet.

(Note: a 'script kiddie' is someone who releases viruses into the cyber-wild, just to see what they can destroy). All this makes the hacker ethic seem like municipal socialism... This is more like Nietzchean agonism a go-go. Or like graffiti that's intended to strengthen a building. Extraordinary times.

Creative Commons in the UK?

Good, usefully critical piece by Sandy Starr from Sp!ked about Lawrence Lessig's official unveiling of his Creative Commons project in the UK. Sandy identifies the gap in Lessig's worthwhile defense of an 'innovation commons': exactly what kind of cultural achievements happen when copyright isn't as tight as a duck's arse?

To show that the internet can 'enable a kind of democratic creativity', Lessig showed us a juvenile piece of online satire, in which video footage of George W Bush and Tony Blair is sychronised with a cheesy love song as if they are pledging their undying love to one another. While this raised a few titters, it was hardly the most insightful or inspiring contribution to world culture. A far better example was a lovely piece of music, which had been recorded by one musician, published online under a Creative Commons license, and then freely embellished by a second musician (who had never met or conferred with the first).

In my conversations with Lessig for the book, he admits that the Net doesn't yet have its Voltaires or Zolas - those whose art, by its very operation, defines and extends the freedom of the public sphere.

Eternal Students

Travel piece from MSNBC on the phenom of the campus holiday - where adults return to that time when "your days stretched on without limit, it seemed, and there was time for everything: discussions lasting hour after hour, a movie at night, the stillness of library and lab, your mind pulsing with new ideas and challenging thoughts." Lord! Will these kidults stop at nothing to retrieve the playful energies of their youth! You'd think there was something wrong in the state of working adulthood! (Irony jag now over. Blogger lies down carefully).

Do you speak Blinglish?

The rise of Blingland. Seems that Ali G has lost his satiric edge: there is now no stopping the embrace of hip-hop culture by the non-black majority in Britain. There's a nice piece of zeitgeistery from the marketing agency behind the claim, TRBI:

Generation X may have been a happy all-inclusive world where mums and kids could enjoy Oasis but today many mainstream adults find black music and culture inaccessible and shocking. Hip-hop culture represents a genuinely rebellious voice.

So is the playa ethic the same as the play ethic? A huge topic, actually. Some days I think the bling culture is a massive satire of commodity culture, from a constituency that is still significantly excluded from most of the important life chances. On others, I go with Stanley Crouchand John McWhorter and see it as a kind of black nihilism, on whose negative energies white kids just feed. And on most other days, I take sustenance from the activism and intelligence of a hip-hop portal like Davey D's Korner. Whatever the take, there's rarely been a culture that's played with the dualities of technology and materialism like hip-hop. Where it evolves next is always worth watching.

Mobile Visions

Corporate futurism. It's a bit Flash-tastic, but this is a compelling site by Vodafone, which gives you the option to explore various personal futures in mobile technology.

I'm most fascinated by the general categories that they're using to typify our interests. As well as the predictable themes of productivity and communication, there's a category of 'care'. This chimes with one of the big ideas in the Play Ethic book, that the 'play-care continuum' is superseding 'work-life balance' as our coming new social contract.

Yet the Vodafone vision is purely of personal care: an overweight man using remote sensors to monitor his galloping heart-rate. As my studies with social workers have shown, the need for networks of care goes far beyond personal coaching. But at least there's a transvaluation going on out there, which is catching everyone - including hard-nosed telcos - in its rising winds.

Conflict in a white space

Virtual Minds. Another great link from DCA's Iain Pate - some German conceptual art that plays with conflict. They wear special suits, apparently:

The suits are symbiotic to remind us of our shared involuntary responses, and they emphasize the consequence of aggression with parts of the suits that act back against the body of the wearer, restricting their sight or movement. Playing in the suits is cathartic, releasing aggression. It is also disarming – it is hard to remain serious in such an odd and humorous engagement.

Well, I'm glad they're laughing...

Caring through Playing

One of the most rewarding and profound consequences of the Play Ethic project has been my occasional engagement with Scottish social workers over the last 18 months, in a joint project with the consultancy New Integrity, titled Reimagining Social Work. More on this in a month or two, when our report (commissioned by the Scottish Executive and ADSW) comes out. But in passing, some links from the Guardian on the deep necessity for playfulness among hard-pressed and socially excluded families. Not just the need for playgrounds, but even play-literacy, with parents who have simply forgotten what it means to sit eye-to-eye with a child, and simulate a world. The entire series of storiesis worth reading.

What Games Can Teach Us

Faintly disappointed review of James Paul Gee's book on the relevance of computer games to traditional ideas of education. But it does do the job of outlining the six teaching priorities that computer games might enhance:

Semiotic Domains (c-games are a literacy worth learning)
Learning and Identity (c-games help you imbibe info because they immerse you in an environment)
Situated Meaning and Learning (c-games allow for educational innovation)
Telling and Doing (c-games can help you understand other domains of knowledge)
Cultural Models (c-games help you see the value frameworks of entire worlds and societies)
The Social Mind (c-games help peer learning and sociability)