The Value of Play and the Telos of Technology

We want to create things, and we want to create them with other people. And we want to connect over that. That’s the value of play.

Micah Redding

At our January Advisory Board meeting, we explored the question of whether we live in a technological age. In Part 1 we addressed the idea of a technological age, and in Part 2 we discussed the telos of technology and the value of work. In Part 3 below, we continue the conversation by exploring the telos of technology and the value of play.

Micah: I’ve been thinking about this in terms of our earlier discussion about the nature of technology. I kind of go with Andy Clark and David Chalmers, with the extended mind, extended cognition thesis. Technology, everything in our environment, we make it part of ourselves. An analogy is in the way birds use their environment to make nests. We all wrap our environment around us in some ways. Humans do this in a way that’s incredibly fluid and open-ended and flexible. And what are we doing? What is our telos for that? I think what we ultimately want is that we want to play. We want to create things, and we want to create them with other people. And we want to connect over that. That’s the value of play.

The Impulse to Play

You can look at all the negative impulses and drives in our society as sublimated versions of that impulse to play. We’re all trying to play some kind of game, and maybe we don’t allow ourselves to do that. So we twist it in some way to convince ourselves it’s serious. I think you see this, particularly in edge technological communities like those around web3 and NFTs. These kinds of spaces are heavily reviled right now in the larger culture, and they feel like they are essentially playing with friends. They’re creating something with friends, and they’re trying to connect with people.

We see the value of play across human history. Early humans were trying to survive, trying to overcome starvation, and so forth. But we didn’t just do that. We also made cave paintings. We also told stories and we put ourselves into those stories. And that’s increasingly what we’ve done through history. As soon as we create virtual worlds, we want to put ourselves in those worlds, because this is what it is to play. We keep putting ourselves into stories and pulling in people and our environment into them. 

So I think that’s what we’re doing, ultimately. We play. That can be a good, healthy, and productive thing. From a Christian perspective, I would say we’re children of God, and children are made to play. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. The value of play is central to the human telos. So one step toward a telos of technology is to just be more aware of the way play makes up the human telos. 

Free Play versus Structured Play

František: Is there a difference between game and play? Because for me, it appears that a game has some rules. Play itself doesn’t have to have rules. I’m just playing with something. But a game, if you want to take part in the game, you have to follow the rules. Like with traffic. The rules of traffic are basically the rules of a game. And if you want to play the game–be part of the traffic–you have to follow the rules. If you don’t follow them, you aren’t allowed to drive. You must leave the game. And we can extend this example to anything else. 

Elias: I think we can talk about this as free play versus structured play. Free play or unstructured play is like a toddler just imagining his or her world. You try to make them play a game and they’re like, no, no, I’m going to change the rules. Gaming is a little more structured. It has rules. I think there’s room for both. 

Wen: We can see a spectrum or a continuum of how much rigidity and structure and rules there are. But even when there are certain rules and constraints, they can still enhance the joy and flourishing of play. One example of that is when you let little kids play in a park. You don’t want them to run into the street, so you set boundaries. Putting rules or boundaries in place can enhance safety and creativity and the joy within play. I’ve done a lot of movement and improv games with adults in very rigid corporate organizations, trying to get them to play. You create boundaries, but then you say, within those boundaries, you can do or explore whatever you want, and express yourself however you feel. 

The Infinite Game

Micah: James Carse describes the concept of finite versus infinite games. In finite games, you play to win. Infinite games, you play to keep playing. And finite games are the kind we think of as rule-based. Infinite games are like what children play where now they’re playing house, now they’re pretending to be dogs, now they’re magicians. The play is constantly mutating and fluid.

The infinite game doesn’t have a rule set in the same way that the finite game does. But it does have a condition, which is that you don’t destroy the ability to keep playing. The value of play forms the basis of it. So when people get kicked out of the game, you find a way to bring them back in. You continually wrap people back in, you continually ensure that the basis of gameplay, the basis of play itself, remains. So there is no strict rule. But there is this premise, that we are all trying to keep playing, we’re going to make sure we don’t destroy the ability to play as we go.