{"id":514,"date":"2024-09-12T23:41:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T23:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=514"},"modified":"2024-09-12T23:41:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T23:41:00","slug":"we-should-learn-to-have-more-fun-or-vice-versa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"We Should Learn to Have More Fun (or Vice-Versa)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By KIM BELLARD<\/p>\n

For several years now, my North Star for thinking about innovation has been Steven Johnson\u2019s great quote (in his delightful Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World<\/em><\/a>): \u201cYou will find the future where people are having the most fun.\u201d No, no, no, naysayers argue, inventing the future is serious business, and certainly fun is not the point of business.\u00a0 Maybe they\u2019re right, but I\u2019m happier hoping for a future guided by a sense of fun than by one guided by P&Ls.<\/p>\n

Well, I think I may have found an equally insightful point of view about fun, espoused by game designer Raph Koster in his 2004 book A Theory of Fun for Game Design<\/em><\/a>: <\/em>\u201cFun is just another word for learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not how most of us think about learning. Learning is hard, learning is going to school, learning is taking tests, learning is something you have to do when you\u2019re not <\/em>having fun. So \u201cfun is just another word for learning\u201d is quite a different perspective \u2013 and one I\u2019m very much attracted to.<\/p>\n

I regret that it took me twenty years to discover Mr. Koster\u2019s insight. I read it in a more current book: Kelly Clancy\u2019s Playing With Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World<\/em><\/a>. Dr. Clancy is not a game designer; she is a neuroscientist and physicist, but she is<\/em> all about play. Her book looks at games and game theory, especially how the latter has been misunderstood\/misused.<\/p>\n

We usually think of play as a waste of time, as something inherently unserious and unimportant, when, in fact, it is how our brains have evolved to learn. The problem is, we\u2019ve turned learning into education, education into a requirement, teaching into a profession, and fun into something entirely separate. We\u2019ve gotten it backwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlay is a tool the brain uses to generate data on which to train itself, a way of building better models of the world to make better predictions,\u201d she writes. \u201cGames are more than an invention; they are an instinct.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, she asserts: \u201cPlay is to intelligence as mutation is to evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Koster\u2019s fuller quote about fun and learning is on target with this:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what games are, in the end. Teachers. Fun is just another word for learning. Games teach you how aspects of reality work, how to understand yourself, how to understand the actions of others, and how to imagine.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t look at our teachers as a source of fun (and many students barely look at them as a source of learning). We don\u2019t look at schools as a place for games, except on the playground, and then only for the youngest students. We drive students to boredom, and, as Mr. Koster says, \u201cboredom is the opposite of learning\u201d (although, ironically, boredom may be important to creativity<\/a>). \u00a0<\/p>\n

Learning is actually fun, especially from a physiological standpoint.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, learning itself is rewarding to the brain,\u201d Dr. Clancy points out. \u201cResearchers have found that the \u201cAha1\u201d moment of insight in solving a puzzle triggers dopamine release in the same way sugar or money can.\u201d We love learning; our brains are hardwired to reward us when we figure something new out. Play is a crucial way we get to that; as Dr. Clancy writes: \u201cPlay is all about the unknown and learning how to navigate it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Clancy is not the first to articulate this point of view. Almost 90 years ago Dutch historian Johan Huizinga wrote Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>Dr. Clancy summaries his point: \u201cPlay, historian Johan Huizinga argues in his classic book Homo Ludens, is how humans innovate, from new tools to new social contracts\u2026.Huizinga sees games as foundational cultural technology: Civilization arises and unfolds in and as play.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am wowed by the assertion that play is how humans innovate. If that seems extreme to you, contrast the crazy, reckless, boisterous atmosphere of many start-ups with the atmosphere of most corporate innovation departments. Not much playing \u2013 not much fun! \u2013 going on in the latter, I suspect.<\/p>\n

Dr. Clancy goes one very interesting step further: \u201cPlay has served as a crucible of culture and innovation; it\u2019s at the heart of design itself\u2026Design is what happens when we uncover rules latent in the world and use these to define the logic of a new, separate system.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not how most of us typically think about design, but how I hope more of us will.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

And if you want to bring up the trend towards the gamification of everything, don\u2019t get Dr. Clancy started: \u201cGamification, in other words, replaces what people actually want with what corporations want,\u201d and \u201cMany jobs that can easily be gamified will more profitably be automated.\u201d You need more than gamifying to make play.<\/p>\n

All this focus on the importance of play and having fun reminds me of the classic essay A Mathematician\u2019s Lament<\/em><\/a>, by Paul Lockhart. In it, he argues that when people say they are just bad at math, what they really are saying is that they\u2019ve been taught math badly. \u201cMath is not about following directions,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s about making new directions.\u201d I.e., playing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Imagine, he suggests, if music was taught by simply teaching students how to transcribe notes, or art by having students identify colors. The students never get to hear music or to see art, much less to create either on their own. They\u2019d hate both and claim to be bad at them. That, he charges, is what has happened with teaching math. \u00a0We\u2019ve drained all the fun out of it, taken all the discovery from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students,\u201d Professor Lockhart laments in closing. \u201cWe could all be having so much more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

We should.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re living in very serious times. If it\u2019s not climate change, it\u2019s microplastics. If it\u2019s not the threat of nuclear war, it\u2019s of biochemical attacks. If it\u2019s not the danger of cyberattacks, it\u2019s of AI. If it\u2019s not the impact of social media, it\u2019s the breakdown of civility. Pick your poison; honestly, it\u2019s hard to keep up with the things we should be worrying about. Fun seems pretty far down our priority list.<\/p>\n

Fun is just another word for learning?\u00a0 Play is at the heart of design? Play is how humans innovate? These are radical concepts in our troubled times, but ones that we should take more seriously \u2014 or, perhaps, more mischievously.<\/p>\n

Kim is a former emarketing exec at a major Blues plan, editor of the late & lamented\u00a0<\/em>Tincture.io<\/em><\/a>, and now regular THCB contributor<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By KIM BELLARD For several years now, my North Star for thinking about innovation has been Steven Johnson\u2019s great quote (in his delightful Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World): \u201cYou will find the future where people are having the most fun.\u201d No, no, no, naysayers argue, inventing the future is serious business, and certainly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}