IdeaFestival

Pretend Play and Metaphor

The importance of pretend play has long been noted as an important milestone in children's development.  Pretend Play allows children to experiment with social situations, strengthen vocabulary and build critical thinking skills. A child who engages in pretend play is also beginning the process of metaphorical thinking. 

One cannot think without metaphors. Metaphors are our way of making connections with the rest of the world; it is our way of understanding new ideas and learning. George Lakoff, another of my favorite linguists, explains the concept of metaphor and its relationship to our thinking. But what he doesn't do is talk about the process of becoming metaphorical.

That's where pretend play comes in.

What are the digital literacies?

Initial results from one of the largest ethnographic studies of kids in their native, digital environment are now available. Could the cheap availability of media be creating a new generation of creatives?

Sure, kids have long been attracted to extracurricular activities like dance or sports. But researchers say digital media is bringing up a new generation who are creators of media rather than just passive consumers of it. Within these digital environments among peers, kids who create and evaluate media are deriving a sense of competence, autonomy, self-determination and connectedness, researchers say.

The case studies discussed last Wednesday are part of a $50 million long-range MacArthur Foundation initiative, the digital media and learning project, to study whether - and how - digital media might be changing kids. Full results will be available later in the year.

More on the results of this study can be found on C|NET.

Wayne

Playground architecture teaches "leaps and boundaries"

Not that my two children need any encouragement to swing on the Jungle Jim, but designing playgrounds to encourage that extra leap and to make failure a part of play certainly expand this parent's perspective about what's happening amid the giggles and shouts. Playgrounds teach life lessons.

Wayne

Dilbert gets his social on

Delivering sarcasm with a well engineered mix of pith, pity and put-down Dilbert has long been a favorite of many office workers and introverts like me who spend too much time in their heads. Still, every once in a while the strip will miss the punch line.

If all that time spent in quietude has sharpened your observational powers, now you write a better one.

Wayne

Be thankful, be happy

Sure there seems to be a fuzzy correlation between gratitude and a generally happy outlook on life. Many of you may know someone like that. Or conversely, perhaps you're acquainted with a hard-headed "realist" who has no time for such huff-puffery.

Still, can the practice of gratitude actually lead to happiness? Dave Munger reports.

Wayne

I want to be foolish like this

Writing about the death of MIT computer science professor, Joseph Weizenbaum, Harvard crank Nicholas Carr and Discover columnist Jaron Lanier use Eliza's tale to assay against errors of the computational kind.

Let me explain.

In the 1960's Weizenbaum created a program called Eliza that would rephrase statements as questions and pose them to test subjects in what became an infamous test of computer-human interaction. Some individuals came to believe that the computer program was a human and lessons drawn from the episodes found their way into Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, which Carr references in his post, Eliza's World:

Perhaps we are beginning to understand that the abstract systems — the games computer people can generate in their infinite freedom from the constraints that delimit the dreams of workers in the real world — may fail catastrophically when their rules are applied in earnest. We must also learn that the same danger is inherent in other magical systems that are equally detached from authentic human experience, and particularly in those sciences that insist they can capture the whole man in their abstract skeletal frameworks [emphasis supplied].

It's easy now to poke fun at the subjects who came to believe that Eliza was human. But the larger lesson that I take - and the one suggested by Carr - is that reason and logic are only part of the human experience.

That is particularly true when it comes to thinking because it is belief - and theatrically, the suspension of disbelief - that makes us human. Belief combined with experience holds out possible worlds for our examination; it is on the superstructure of belief that we can absorb wisdom, practice empathy, strive for justice and extend mercy where none may be merited.

As cheaply amusing as it might be in hindsight, what Eliza demonstrated was not that we can foolishly ascribe feelings to objects, but that it is the suspension of the facts that makes foolishness - as well as soul-stirring grace - possible. The rules be damned.

An interactive Web-based version of Eliza is here.

Wayne

Homaro Cantu - IF Conversations

Homaro Cantu, Chicago-based chef, inventor, entrepreneur and leader in "molecular gastronomy" certainly brings a non-conventional perspective to food. Where else might a menu tasting consist of actually tasting the menu?

As always, these brief conversations may be found on IFTV at YouTube.

Wayne

Shakespeare, Hollywood Style

If you've never watched Kenneth Branaghs version of Much Ado About Nothing, you simply must. Catch a short piece of it here. Besides the fact that he looks a lot like my husband (:) and I think he is absolutely yummy, his is, honestly, one of the best Shakespearean actors out there. 

One really must see a Shakespearean play. Although we study the bard's language in class and watch some movies and try, oh try to help 14 year-olds understand the passion of Romeo and Juliet, it really doesn't do the plays justice unless someone with a particular talent at understanding those lines delivers them in an appropriate fashion. 

Actually, anything Branagh does is splendid but if you are sitting home one night thinking, "I really need to watch a Shakespearean play to hone my Elizabethan language skills", this movie is the one to see.  Of course if you'd rather see a tragedy and ponder the meaning of "to be or not to be", his version of Hamlet is fabulous as well. 

Tina

IF Conversations - Ruby Lerner

President of the Creative Capital Foundation, Ruby Lerner describes how the IdeaFestival helps her business. Creative Capital is an arts foundation modeled on venture capital concepts.

The IdeaFestival Conversations series, featuring such people as Michio Kaku and Nicholas Kristof speaking on issues of interest to them, may also be found at IFTV.

Wayne

Growing compassion

Having first read a story about how experiments with the cooperation of Bhuddist monks had shown a marked change in brain structure as a result of meditative practices - particularly those areas thought responsible for compassion and consciousness -I was gratified to see that Newsweek's Sharon Begley recently brought the story forward.

New research demonstrates that the voluntary generation of compassion thought and feeling can result in long lasting changes for the better in our brains. We can indeed grow the areas of our brain responsible for compassion.

Cool, isn't it?

Similarly, UCLA psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz touched on the idea last September in Louisville while arguing that practiced "reframing" can curb obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Wayne