The Play Ethic

Independent Review: 'On the Road to Wikitopia'

My review in the Independent of two excellent (the second of them groundbreaking) books on web culture - We-Think by Charles Leadbeater, and Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. An extract:

No one could object to sprawling processes of "mass innovation" creating public encyclopedias and seed banks for developing countries, turning cities into giant learning spaces and citizens into journalists. Leadbeater's mantra "we are what we share" could conceivably become "an economy's motive force", particularly if consumerism begins to hit the limits of ecological sustainability hard. A vision of living as an active, creative player-with-others has inspired this particular reviewer for many years.

But, as he reminds us, some areas – such as care services – won't be affected by We-Think: "you cannot change a wet nappy with a text message". Nor harvest food, nor extract minerals, nor generate energy. Although the participatory structure of the web was founded by a singular mix of values ("the academic, the hippie, the peasant and the geek"), there's no guarantee that happy ethos will guide all behaviour within its halls.

Rules of the Brain - Keep It In Play

Been alerted by an American publicist to a very well-produced website for a book called Brain Rules, written by an enthusiastic scientist called John Medina. The interesting bit is 'Rule One - Exercise', where the claim is that our sedentary, physically static school-and-work lives are the least amenable environments for learning and productivity. This reminds us of our other American play-associate Frank Forencich, and his 'Exuberant Animal' fitness consultancy, which is similarly rooted in a background of evolutionary psychology and biology. Tied in with the NYT piece below, clearly a lot of interest in the physically and mentally restorative dimensions of play in the US at the moment.

New York Times... gets play big time

The New York Times recently published what looks like a front-cover Magazine article on play, covering all the significant scholarly figures in the filed (Stuart Brown, Brian Sutton-Smith), and focussing very much on the biological-psychological dimensions. A classic quote here from Sutton-Smith:

Why would such an enriching activity as play also be a source of so much anarchy and fear? Sutton- Smith found one possible answer by reading Stephen Jay Gould, the author and evolutionary biologist. The most highly adaptive organisms, Gould wrote, are those that embody both the positive and the negative, organisms that ‘‘possess an opposite set of attributes usually devalued in our culture: sloppiness, broad potential, quirkiness, unpredictability and, above all, massive redundancy.’’ Finely tuned specific adaptations can lead to blind alleys and extinction, he wrote; ‘‘the key is flexibility.’’

What Gould called quirkiness, Sutton-Smith called play. ‘‘Animal play has been described by many investigators as fragmentary, disorderly, unpredictable and exaggerated,’’ Sutton-Smith wrote, and ‘‘child play has been said to be improvised, vertiginous and nonsensical.’’ The adaptive advantage to a behavior that is multifaceted, then, is that pursuing it, enjoying it, needing it to get through the day, allows for a wider range in a play-loving person’s behavioral repertory, which is always handy, just in case.

Playing might serve a different evolutionary function too, he suggests: it helps us face our existential dread. The individual most likely to prevail is the one who believes in possibilities — an optimist, a creative thinker, a person who has a sense of power and control. Imaginative play, even when it involves mucking around in the phantasmagoria, creates such a person. ‘‘The adaptive advantage has often gone to those who ventured upon their possibility with cries of exultant commitment,’’ Sutton-Smith wrote. ‘‘What is adaptive about play, therefore, may be not only the skills that are a part of it but also the willful belief in acting out one’s own capacity for the future.’