Top of the T: five dangerous things
Gever Tully of the the Tinkering School has a great TED University talk (I think these are the people who don’t get the big stage . . . they should publish more of these) about 5 dangerous things parents should let their kids do. Most of them, in their straight form or adapted, are pretty useful for adult designers, especially those of us who manage more than do these days, as ways to keep us fresh.
One of the downsides of blogging about video or audio is that it’s hard to transcribe the key points, so I’m going on memory, here:
Play with fire — for kids, this covers everything from actually learning how to build a fire (stones and sparks, fireplace arrangements) to working with kilns and fire ovens. Kids not only learn about the physics of fire and respect for powerful forces, but they also learn about the creative power of subjecting things to heat. For adults, I think there’s an analog to playing with electricity, electronics, and code . . . things that are powerful and promethean, but where even a bit of familiarity can be massively empowering.
Throw a spear – it’s physical physics, problem solving, optimization of body mechanics and trajectories, and deeply Savannah evolution primal (I’m going with the secondary -h spelling to see how many people think IxDA08 rather than Africa.) For adults, I think it’s guns. There’s a woman in my office who goes shooting once a month at a Manhattan-based gun club with a Ladies night. My first game design title was a hunting game (Trophy Buck, it’s still on some clearance shelves) and I was fascinated all the things about bullet trajectories, winds, shot, timing and the calculation goes into guns. Bows are good too, but they lack the chemistry, and oiled metal of guns. Shooting in general has a good hunter-gatherer feel, worthy of throwing spears.
Own a pocketknife — this one was a little nostalgic for me. Tully leads with the point that getting a pocketknife used to be a rite of passage for a young boy. It was a tool, but it was dangerous and there were safety lessons and responsibilities somberly passed on to me when I got a knife. This one may be a literal translation for adults: get a pocket-knife, and not just one with a USB drive, but one that has some tools. Remember not to take it to the airport, but see how useful it is to carry around, see if you find yourself tinkering more. Then there are some adult tools to potentially play with: routers, soldering irons, a decent tool box. Or upgrade to a DeWalt tool and read the last chapter of Neal Stephenson’s In the Beginning there was the Command Line
Take apart appliances — I’m doing this one tonight or tomorrow. I just replaced a clock radio (with an iHome!) and I’m going to dissect it tonight. I may try to connect parts to a power supply and play with contact points to see what I can do. But it’s a sad reminder of how many things I throw out without looking at them. Gamers: take apart a rumble-pack or haptic empowered controller to see how they do it before you chuck it! Very cool!
That’s four, but I think my enthusiasm wanes here anyway, cuz I think the remaining ones are drive a car (let your kid drive a car) and break some DRM. I didn’t find those so compelling and the adult analog of driving a car — sailing or gliding or flying — seem expensive and outdoors.