the rise of the economic playground

We're told that 'play' needs to be taken more seriously these days. It is an interesting concept, especially for the way it is distinct from that of 'a play'. Where 'play' involves make-believe, innovation, discovery and role-playing,  'a play' involves a script, a ritual, characters and, above all, an audience. 'A play' is performed in a way that 'play' is not. Erving Goffman defines a performance as:

That arrangement which transforms an individual into a stage performer, the latter, in turn, being an object that can be looked at in the round and at length without offence, and looked to for engaging behaviour, by persons in an “audience” role.

Plays have audiences; play does not. It's a crucial distinction. 'A play' acquires irony from the audience knowing things the actors don't, which cannot happen in 'play'.

So if we were to think about the creation of artworks, play is crucial in the development of the artwork, in terms of the inspiration, conversations, fantasies, encounters and accidents that feed into the development of the work. Despite Will Self's little joke, in which he sat in a gallery to write a novel, we do not usually expect there to be an audience at this stage of the process. The work then attains its audience after 'play' has ended.

Except, I have a new metaphor for the next stage of post-industrial capitalism: the play-ground. Where play happens, but there is also an audience.*

I've just been discussing how corporations could exploit user-led innovation, the assumption being, a la open source, mountain bikes and, err, cars, that users need to become recognised as part of the design and engineering teams of companies. Yes, an interesting proposition, no doubt. Give people the tools and some sort of IP bargain, see what they come up with, then feed it into the innovation processes. See society as one vast R&D lab. Leave them to play for a bit, then strike a deal with them over their creation.

Or here's a different way of extracting value from our hyperactive society of networkers, creaters, publishers, and users. Monitor their movements and clicks, see what they recommend and share, observe what they leave behind and what they skip over. Listen to what they're saying. Dangle things in front of them to see how they react. See society as one vast cage of lab rats. Watch them at play, then monetise what you witness.

This latter model corresponds to the darker fears of the Google age, of Phorm, of the society of permanent audit (to paraphrase Mike Power at our Performance conference). The implication is that value is created behind the backs of the users, as a perpetual experiment in behavioural psychology.

But what's the half-way house? In this experimental society, what lies between the user as scientist and the user as rat? This is where the metaphor of the playground comes in: the user as child. We are neither scientists nor rats, but children, playing creatively, producing something, but with an audience of adults who we choose, mostly, to ignore. We are lost in our world of play, but we are still being watched. It's not a performance, yet it is being seen and evaluated.

So how does our playground society produce economic value? Well, of course it produces value for those at play, who enjoy the scurrying around, socialising and innovating. But how might it produce business value? Most of the time, it will still be via the monitoring, watching, evaluating. What play produces is mostly of little interest to our corporate parents. Except, consider the exception. Parents still retain and cherish the paintings that their small children produce, and stick them up on their walls. Childish play still has its totemic products that are valued and endure. This, then, is the metaphor for user-generated innovation in the eyes of corporations: the innocent, messy artwork produced at playtime, that can be held up as proof that things aren't all top-down.

I fully appreciate that my definition of a child as a cross between a scientist and a rat may make me less than ideal parenting material, but I guess I'm just, err, playing with metaphors.

* The other metaphor I thought of was a live sex show, but that would have taken the subsequent five paragraphs in a wholly unsavoury direction

Comments

[typewritten]

The idea of "economic playground" is most spot on (a potential favorite topic for a "test society" though!).

This idea of collective, distributed R&D in which everybody happily participate as guinea pigs in market innovation (and they don't even get paid) is very interesting. This also connects to a tendency towards the dismantlement of expensive R&D in-house structures and the usefulness of a joyful gift economy of feedback provision. Perhaps this is part of an answer to your question on what kind of a "business value" this playground economy does produce: what it actually does is to lower (or externalize) R&D costs. You economize on the costs of paying both the scientists and the laboratory rats.

[Bill Thompson]

Do you recall the Simpsons episode 'Grift of the Magi' - http://www.snpp.com/episodes/BABF07 - in which a corporation takes over Springfield Elementary offering more 'fun' for the kids but is actually using them as a marketing development group? It ended badly...

:-)

[pete]

IIRC evolution sometimes precedes via neotony. (For example, human faces resemble those of infant chimpanzees.) And I've often thought society is developing along the same lines.

[pat kane]

As ever, William, bracing commentary. Nice to see my stuff kicking off this post, have responded in kind http://www.theplayethic.com/2009/03/critiquingtheplayground.html

best, pk

[Will Davies]

Thanks, Pat. I will continue the dialogue over there