Gaming: The Canary of Co-Evolution or the Mockingbird?
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If you were in one of a handful of places in 1995 in the United States, you knew that a revolution was starting. It’s been going on quietly ever since, even though most people are still blissfully ignorant of it. This game, Settlers of Catan, was the opening shot.But if your idea of “boardgames” is Candyland, Monopoly and The Game of Life, I’m here to tell you that boardgames can do better. We don’t have to put up with “roll a die and advance around a track” as the only way to pass a rainy afternoon. Are you with me? Then join the boardgame revolution, and play this thing!
Ed.: Another point worthy of note: Settlers is, internationally, the single best-selling boardgame in the last ten years, with more than 13m copies sold worldwide. This certainly raises the question as to whether “videogames” are the revolutionary advance some think, or whether interest in games of all sorts have co-evolved in the last couple of decades. (Emphasis mine.)
This certainly does raise a very large issue. How much of this trend (or any trend for that matter) is the dog’s nose coming through the door versus the dog’s tail already through it? Personally, I think the dog is already in the room making a mess, stinking up the joint, and looking for an unguarded kid’s plate. How much do we really know about the extent of adoption and complexity of ‘attachment’ of small or large technologies? I know it is no excuse not to explore and hypothesize, but it definitely is a call to greater humility. 13,000,000 people have bought a board game that almost no ‘conventional’ citizens one knows about. And a cool board game it is. In fact I had someone honk at me as they passed on the Interstate the other day for I knew not what. Until they slowed down, that is. On a yellow legal pad the passenger had written, “We really appreciate the “Settlers” sticker.” I was driving my 1990 Accord which on its bumper has a sticker that says, “Will trade wood for sheep.” Thus, I was broadcasting a meme to all and sundry on the road–I am a Settlers geek. I gave them the thumbs up and they gave me the thumbs up and down some parallel trended track we went. Complexity? Co-Evolution? I have always been humbled by the law of unintended consequences which makes it nearly impossible to follow the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, but now I am dogged by the new law of unintended connections.
I am reminded of something Robert Louis Flood wrote in his very fine book, Rethinking the Fifth Discipline.
In that book he describes three paradoxes of management and organization:
- We will not struggle to manage over things–we will manage within the unmanageable.
- We will not battle to organise the totality–we will organise within the unorganisable.
- We will not simply know things–but we will know the unknowable.
(Rethinking, 3)
Paradox is a handy intellectual tool for describing with words what is essentially indescribable. Zen has a story I am certain many of you are familiar with.
The master points up at the moon and asks the student: “What is this?”
The student replies “that is the moon.”
The master corrects him: “No. That is a finger pointing at the moon.”
Or as the Buddha was reported to have said, “All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond. Even let him catch sight of the moon, and still he cannot see its beauty.”
tellio :: May.10.2008 :: Good Reading :: No Comments »