For more information: [email protected].
The Play Ethic has a particular analytical and intellectual take on issues around technology, culture, psychology, organisations (and many other areas besides).
Since the late nineties, Pat Kane has been regularly asked to complete commissioned research, write op-ed and features, or contribute to symposia or other academic processes, around the topic of play and associated ideas.
Below is a selection of papers, articles and research papers from over the last 10 years. A complete list is available on request.
If you would like Pat to write or research for you, please contact him at the e-mail address above.
Commissioned Research
Various organisations have commissioned Pat Kane for in-depth reports on issues of public policy and marketing, from a players' perspective.
"Play, Potentiality and the Constitution of the Net". Paper, slideshow and video for Digital Labor conference, NYC, November 2009.
"Parenting the Play Kids? A Play Ethic for the BBC", paper for BBC R&D, 2009
"Innovation as a National Pastime: Impossible or Necessity?", White Paper for Design Innovation Scotland, 2008
'What comes after the work ethic? The play ethic!", paper for Pl@yground, the periodical of Lego's Serious Play consultancy, 2007
'Soulitarian City', background paper generated for Urban Learning Space 2006 seminar on digital literacies in Glasgow (see Workshops page).
'Play, Mobility and Learning', paper generated for Urban Learning Space, in response to Nokia Insight and Foresight, Play conference in Vancouver, 2005
Advertising/marketing: Pat Kane has consulted to various advertising agencies since 2000 on the topic of play, including Lowe Lintas and Red Brick Road.
The most notable input was into Bartle Bogle Hegarty's 2000 tv ad campaign for Microsoft's X-Box platform - for background on this, see Chapter Five of The Play Ethic book, 'Rise of the Soulitarians'. Here are links to the two X-Box ads: "Birth to Death", and "Mosquito".
Journalism
Blogging: Since 2004, Pat Kane has maintained a regular blog on the Play Ethic, now available at www.theplayethic.com. The blog is organised roughly according to the chapter themes in Pat's book, The Play Ethic: A Manifesto For A Different Way Of Living. We invite and welcome all comments on, and linkings to, these posts. There is also an RSS feed available.
The Guardian/Observer: Pat has been a regular contributor to the Guardian group of newspapers since the late 80's. The Play Ethic was effectively launched in October 22, 2000, as a front-cover article in the Observer's Life magazine, titled 'Play For Today'. Since then Pat has written for the Guardian's Comment and Technology pages, on subjects that develop the play agenda:-
- on play and the politics of wellbeing (also here and here)
- on the new military-gaming complex in the US (also here and here)
- on youth delinquency as a plea for a play ethic, and the need to connect kids' web-culture to a love of science.
- on wireless idealism (and here), and the open-source model for education
- on being Britain's first 'thinker-in-residence' at Bristol's Festival of Ideas
The Independent: Pat has been a book reviewer for the Independent since the late-nineties, and has pursued many of the themes and interests around the Play Ethic through these reviews. For example, he has written:-
- on a society and culture of play, reviewing books on the politics of collective joy and the new paternalism of 'nudge' thinking, on the deep psychology of toys, dolls and robots, on the science of happiness, on the social dynamics of celebrity, on rejuveniles and kidults, on the X and Y generations, and on the power of science fiction
- on computer games, reviewing books on living in Second Life, on the cognitive benefits of gaming, and on the economics of virtual worlds
- on the nature of our digital economy and society, reviewing works by William Gibson, Lawrence Lessig (and here) and Douglas Ruskhoff (and here), and profiling figures like Marshall McLuhan
- on net-era concepts like 'wikinomics' and 'web 2.0: organizing without organizations', the 'economics of attention', the 'new barbarians of the info-age', and 'emotions on the internet'; and telling the story of being a microserf with Microsoft in the mid-nineties
- and on play-relevant social theorists like Zygmunt Bauman (and here), Richard Holloway, Noam Chomsky, Anthony Giddens, Roger Scruton and Ziauddin Sardar
Scholarship
The Play Ethic book contained substantial portions of theoretical and research-based study into the contemporary power and potential of play. After publication, Pat was invited to participate in a number of academic symposia, both physical and on-line, in the UK and US. These resulted both in papers generated by Pat, and in academic citations by a variety of other authors.
"Play, Potentiality and the Constitution of the Net". Paper, slideshow and video for Digital Labor conference, NYC, November 2009.
'Dialoguing Play': Pat Kane in discussion with Steve Linstead and Rob McMurray. With additional questions by Andy McColl, Sebastian Bos and Ed Wray-Bliss. Published in Ephemera, volume 7(2): 346-363 (2007). The result of a seminar to mark Pat's appointment as Visiting Lecturer at the School of Management at the University of York.
'Why All Work And No Play Makes Managers Dull': Pat Kane in discussion with Philip Hancock, Martin Parker and others, Warwick Business School, University of Leicester. Analyses of the Play Ethic from Leicester University's Bogdan Costea, Norman Crump, Kostas Amiridis are available here, here and here.
'The power of play', essay commissioned by Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, Issue 33, Summer 2006. Extended and developed version of lecture to Brisbane Festival of Ideas (see Keynotes page).
Other academic coverage includes:-
Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 38 Issue 4, Page 683, November 2004. Bob Davis, 'Booknotes' (document available here)
'Neo-Marxism, Neo-Situationism and Play', in From Trocchi to Trainspotting: Scottish Critical Theory since 1960, by Micheal Gardiner, EUP 2007.
'Let's all go out to play', Rebecca Abrams (author of The Playful Self) analyses Pat Kane's Observer article, New Statesman 13 Nov 2000.
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