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PLAY JOURNAL Regular update on the Play Ethic agenda Journal editor: Pat Kane 100176 Curiosities served |
2003-11-12 11:31 AM Fighting Thoughts, Happy Theories / I Link, Therefore We Are Previous Entry :: Next Entry Mood: Pugnacious Read/Post Comments (0) Edited by Pat Kane (email)
:: Sociology gets physical (and fierce) :: ![]() The goal, he says, is to convey his subjects' world by experiencing it firsthand — in the case of his boxers, from the point of view of their sweaty, pummeled bodies. It's an ambition, he insists, that represents a radical departure from what passes as ethnography todayI suppose that logic makes Kevin Warwick the only man who can theorise properly about cyborgs...I'd like to put Loic and the Beck Futures finalists Inventory in a ring, and see what their Fierce Sociology's left hook is like. :: Happiness Studies :: ![]() Easterbook's list of unhappiness triggers - envy, lack of sleep, future-shock, "bad news" media - might be remedied, he suggests, by a raised minimum wage, universal health care, restraints on gargantuan CEOs, and more foreign aid. Richard Reeves has waged an admirable essay campaign to get the UK government to accept that, after a point of prosperity, collective well-being becomes more important than individual prosperity. Is the notion of a "creative commons" becoming more than a buzz-phrase or a cute IP contract? Might it begin to describe a prosperous society's guarantees of security and enablement (citizen's wage, shorter working week, free media, etc), which then allows for the exploration of personal meaning, fulfilment, happiness (which I'd call a "players' agenda")? :: Flow into that Scrum! :: in the Observer this week, by talking about the great Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow. The World Cup rugby gives him the excuse: Flow doesn't come from accenting the muscularity of rugby - desire, hurt, destroy, and dominate are the watchwords of the English coaches - but from helping each player to reach into himself to control his consciousness and then subsume himself in the service of the team. It's a language of concentration, focus and, ultimately, of pleasure.Apparently, the French team has it in spades. :: If the Kidults are United -- :: I'm quoted in a Scotsman piece examining the kidult phenomenon: "I think we have a player’s generation," Kane says. "Having lived through the end of Communism, the internet and mobile revolutions, CGI movies, the flexible workplace and at least three video-game wars with Afghanistan and Gulf wars I and II, the 17-40 age group just expects the world to be a simulation and a performance, their lives lived as games or scripts. Reality for them/us is unstable and unpredictable, requiring skill and wit and sharpness to navigate, but which can always be rebooted and started again...This generation is now coming to cultural and social leadership." :: - Then The Kids Will Never Be Defeated*:: Non-sequitur piece by Dave Hill in the Guardian, as to whether kids are being colonised by merchandising. His crucial caveat: haven't they always? Haven't little girls always raided their mum's wardrobes? Haven't little boys always been obsessive collectors of moulded plastic forms? Em, yes. ![]() * - apologies to all old punks for Sham 69 reference. Talking of which, see what punk can do for sectarian division... :: Play Times :: Me++ "I am part of the networks and the networks are part of me. I am visible to Google. I link, therefore I am" (William Mitchell). If so, then you're the kind of person who will rejoice that they've found something sociable to do with their Bluetooth'd mobile phones. Hello, "blue-jacking". If you're going to give out promotional crap in the workplace... choose wisely. For the only choices are: Successories. Or to your left, Despair, Inc. The dangers of too much 'flow' - and too little? Join... ![]() |