The Playful World

Just found out about The Playful World, a book that sounds very interesting. In some ways, it's like the Playing the Future book I'm finishing up now. The basic notion is that the e-toys around us are creating fundamental changes in the way kids think about things. As an incurable optimist, even on this ambiguous morning after the election, I resonate with the description of the book. Here's part of the Amazon review:

Are Furbies avatars of future pets? Mark Pesce, Chair of USC's Interactive Media Program and creator of VRML, thinks that technological development and recreational activity inform each other and are converging into a strange, new immersive environment. The Playful World: Interactive Toys and the Future of Imagination is a thoughtful peek into the guts of such toys as LEGO's Mindstorms and Sony's PlayStation2; by extrapolation, Pesce sees them driving research in nanotechnology and virtual reality, but he nobly refuses to succumb to the temptation to make precise predictions.

Taking a look at the history of play (and taking care to knock down whatever remaining resistance we might have to considering play less worthwhile than other activities), the book shows it to be a form of learning--perhaps the most natural form. Toy technology is catching up with current research rapidly; more households have powerful computers playing "Crazy Taxi" with the kids than working on budgets with parents. The presumption that we are creating new ways of learning, knowing, and being that are rapidly overtaking our means to understand and control them could be frightening if explored by an author less familiar with the technology and its users. Instead of thinking "game over," Pesce believes we should get ready to "play again." --Rob Lightner

Of course, not all kids have access to this kind of play. And if the author's thesis is correct we'll have yet another force at work to widen the Digital Divide, both here and globally. (Guess I'm not 100% optimistic after all.)