Edited by Pat Kane (email)

Again, apologies for the fortnightly frequency - finishing a batch of writing, so weekly service will resume soon. In the meantime...


:: What Did Arthur C. Clarke Say About Technology Again?::

...That any sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic. Well, it gets damn near magical with Amazon.com's new "Search Inside" facility. They've scanned all the pages of their stock of books, and you can now keyword search them. I agree with all the awestruck commentary about it from personal experience.

For example: How do you find out about recent literary representations of social workers (part of a consultancy with the Scottish Executive I've been doing)? Unless you lucked onto a Ph.D paper in the recesses of a Google search, not easily. But put "fiction" and "social worker" in Amazon's Search Inside, and you at least have some leads. Of course, one looks up one's own meme, and is delighted to find some positive citations...

It's not perfect by any means - but it is heartening that the kind of database richness previously only available through costly subscriptions to Lexis-Nexis, or access to academic resources, is now being parcelled out to the general consumer. From Brewster Kahle to the BBC's Creative Archive, there's a gathering recognition that we need to defend what Lawrence Lessig has called the "innovation commons" of the internet - precisely to support a culture of innovation, by putting some resources beyond commodification. What I call in the forthcoming Play Ethic book the "grounds of play". Exciting times!


:: More 'Substance of Style' ::

More coverage of Postrel's new Substance of Style book at Washington Post and Christianity Today, which is by far the most interesting review - noting Postrel's demolition of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, who thought aesthetics is what we do when we're freed from necessity. As she reminds us from the paleontology record, humans have been decorating surplus to requirements since their beginning. Virginia and I both agree on the ontology, the deep reality, of playfulness - though not on its institutional or political consequences. However, I'm reading a fascinating young anthropologist Postrel cites, called Grant McCracken, who has constructed a whole new theory of "plenitude".

Can a US libertarian, and this UK social democrat, can find a way to play together? Be nice to find out...


:: Lifestyle Militants ::

The Play Ethic isn't all about tech and style. The genderquake in families and relationships is also changing the meaning of play - now a justification for radical changes in the way that people work in organisations. This report from Scotland tells of many more fathers staying at home, while their wives enjoy their new prominence in the work place. Is playing with the kids more attractive than playing office politics? On the other side, those who are "playing adults" - singletons without children - are demanding products and services that fit their lifestyles, says the CS Monitor.


:: Open Source, Funky Commons ::

Back to playing on the commons... Wired this month has a very cute title, "Leader of the Free World", with Linux originator Linus Torvalds on the front, looking like Scandinavian hacker-cool personified. There's an important piece on how open-source values - encapsulated as "Share the Goal, Share the Work, Share the Result" - are spreading to law, design, education and biotech.

But I'm particularly happy that pop music, and in some cases pop musicians, are in the forefront on figuring out what a techno-commons will be like. I've already linked to the Brazilian latin-megastar-turned-minister-of-culture Gilberto Gil - here's another great profile, parts one and two - who sees open source as a way for Brazil to compete with the North (and the Wall Street Journal sees the danger). Here's another visionary piece piece by Ray Kurzweil - who deserves my undying respect for introducting Stevie Wonder to synthesizers in the early seventies - which imagines what "the future of music in the age of spiritual machines" might be. Not only has music downloading settled into a sensible business model - but musicians will start to fuse their intelligences with "intelligent" instruments. The first cyborg will be a musician? Tell that to Kraftwerk, playing in Scotland this week.


:: PK OK ::

Been scrivening for various journals recently, both pieces interesting in terms of this agenda...

Training the Masses My frustration with train travel as a wireless opportunity wasted (from the Guardian Online). Also dependent on better batteries, of course...

It's MTV's World - We Just Live In it My musings on MTV, on the eve of its European Awards in Edinburgh. Is it Meta-TV, Mainstream-TV or Matrix-TV these days?

:: Play Times ::

Sony and Qualia No, not a philosophy paper, but what seems to be a major strategic reorientation. At least, I think it is... anyway they do make lovely robots

The New Great Game That's geopolitics in the Caspian, not the latest from Playstation. Though I'm sure the two can be immanently connected...

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