mathpunk.net

I’m thinking about how I work so differently on solo projects than on projects with other people.

Solitary play is just play. It’s fun, and self-absorbing, in a literal sense: your self is absorbed into the play, and we experience ego-less joy for a little while.

Play with playmates may be just play, but it often turns into games, and games have goals. It’s an arbitrary goal, accomplished via suboptimal means, but it’s a goal nonetheless. (If you want the ball in the hole so bad, why don’t you pick it up, walk it over, and drop it in? Because that’s not what golf is.)

I grew up reading “weird stuff”: The Invisibles, Planetary, weird science, industrial music magazines, RE/Search, and other things that were about people who were clearly much cooler than myself. Now that I’ve discovered atemporality as the spine of a design aesthetic, I want to do some solitary play with all of the culture I’ve absorbed over the past 33 years, and all the interesting new culture that is being, uh, cultured by the network.

What I’m trying to say is: If you are reading this blog for a new take on mathematics, economics, and game theory, you ought to check out Math for Primates, the blog/podcast/embryonic-community I’m developing with Nick. Math for Primates is a group project, and so it is relatively focused and goal-oriented despite the silliness and poo-flinging.

If, on the other hand, you believe that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, you should stick around. I’m collecting a bunch of shiny new toys and I’m looking forward to playing with them. This is going to be solo play, so I’m giving myself free license to be self-absorbed and meandering*, until/unless a solo game with a point emerges, at which point all bets are off.

notes for my Brain (links to come):

atemporality (@bruces, @justinpickard)
serious play: Evoke and SuperBetter (@evokenet, @avantgame)
soft development / networked development (@hexayurt, @leashless)
evolutionary health (@johndurant)
learning experience design: networked learning, learning as game, games in learning
consciousness health: luck-training, mind-training

* – Look, I’ll just admit it: I got into atemporality because it gives me wardrobe ideas. I don’t think you understand how much psychic censoring takes place to get me to not discuss my clothing and hair in our ostensibly mathematical podcast. It’s like there’s a fight for influence inside my head waged between the homunculi of John Horton Conway and Dennis Miller.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.