Playing with the Future

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'Hope is a gentle breeze, but fear is a whipping icy wind.' So explained 8-year-old Elsie, one of nine children between the ages of 8 and 14 who took the stage in June at Minneapolis' Walker Art Center to demonstrate the Kids Philosophy Slam. The program, which culminates in an annual contest, is designed to get young people across the United States thinking about the big questions, in this case, 'Which is more powerful, hope or fear?' It was clear from the awestruck faces in the crowd that young people also have some big answers.

The kids were one of the biggest draws at the 2006 PUSH conference, a three-day idea fest that brings together futurists, artists, technologists, scientists, policymakers, and business strategists to explore what's 'pushing' the future. This year's theme, 'A New Life,' was explored in talks on everything from cosmology, global climate change, and nanotechnology to humanitarian architecture, digital storytelling, and the emerging field of 'cooperation studies.' And whether by coincidence or by design, a leitmotif that emerged across many of the presentations was another lesson learned from youth: the value of play as a creative force.

Take the explosion of blogs, podcasts, and social networking sites. According to Ze Frank, the comic genius behind the popular video blog at www.zefrank.com/theshow, what's driving this torrent of online creativity is people's innate desire to play with new toys and to engage in conversations with each other. Ultimately, this is 'a social revolution, not a technological one,' Frank said, warning businesspeople in the PUSH audience that they ignore this wave of 'user-generated content' at their peril. 'If you don't talk with your audience, they will talk behind your back,' he said. The Kryptonite Corporation, he pointed out, was blindsided when a short film that showed how to pick one of its bike locks with a Bic pen hit the Internet in 2004.

The business world, in fact, might do well to get into the game. In a demonstration of their Croquet Project, computer scientists David Smith and Mark McCahill showed how they created a virtual reality that can merge the tiresome task of formulating spreadsheets with the fun of using characters like those in a video game.

The open-source system builds interactive three-dimensional virtual worlds in which multiple users can manipulate their avatars to cooperatively edit text files and spreadsheets. Smith and McCahill foresee language teachers using Croquet to create virtual classrooms far richer than textbooks or CDs. Architects and engineers may use it for three-dimensional prototyping of buildings or machine parts. And work teams scattered across the globe could use it to hold meetings with visual aids like a shared whiteboard.

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