Mark Pesce is worth checking out...
So, I read this book over the weekend.
The Playful World: How Technology Is Transforming Our Imagination
by Mark Pesce
Read more about this title... I did it mostly because I've always been a little curious about Pesce. And the subject was right up my alley. It has seemed to me a reasonable hypothesis that it should be possible to draw parallels between a generation's youthful play, and the cultural forms they later bring into being. Pesce's personal site, and his professional site for that matter, are both worth a look. And the book was interesting. Mostly, however, for reasons that I don't think Pesce would be particularly happy about. The book was published in 2000, just before anybody really noticed blogs, for instance, and well before the "social". I suspect he'd write a much different book today. That's always the risk I suppose. Given the accelerating rate of change, it's more of a risk than ever before. The future happens -- like -- tomorrow. Anyway, it was still worth the read. I found this quote particularly noteworthy. "Our children will know how to make sense of the playful world, an important lesson they will be happy to share with us, if we are willing. Reversing the flow of history, if only momentarily, we will need to learn how to speak the language of this new world, its customs and its truths. It might be humbling (after all, they are our children), but in that humility is a great opportunity: we could resist, to be shoved aside by history, or we could choose another path, listen to our children intently, and let them teach us their secrets, their new philosophies, and for this, grow into a new understanding of the world we have made for ourselves." We could. But will we? Earlier generations have had shorter leaps to make, and failed to even acknowledge the gap. Of course our situation is a little different. We will live longer, and have to work longer. As change accelerates, generational gaps widen. How old can you be and still make the leap?
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