Transcriber: Fiammetta Cartelli
Reviewer: Michael Nystrom I believe that if we want
to fully unleash our potential as a society, as individuals
and as a species, we must change the way we think about play because our world is in trouble. The ways we teach our kids in school
doesn’t do justice anymore to the complexity of the world. Social media has transformed
into a swamp of mindless consumption. And technological progress
is gaining more and more speed. But we have no idea
where we want to go with it. So, these are big and serious
real-world problems. I wish there would be a way
to do something about it. Well, I wish there would be a way
to level up teaching in school. I wish there would be a way
for us to turn social media back into a place where people meet
and discover their creativity. And I wish there would be a way for us
to put different futures on the table, talk about them, and decide
which ones we want to thrive for. Well, you know what? There is a way. When I was a kid, I learned a lot
about the complexity of the world and how to interact with it
through playing - playing with my parents
and with my friends. I learned a lot about my own creativity
through making stuff just for fun. And I learned a lot about a future
that I would want to live in by pretending that it was already there. Now, if playing is so good for learning,
once we grow up, why do we stop? Maybe we think games are not good. Maybe we think games are addictive,
they make people violent, or they are just a waste of time. Well, today I'm here to tell you
that this is simply not true. Let’s not confuse
the content and the medium. Yes, there are some really
bad games. True. But the medium of play
is just a very powerful tool for us to immerse ourselves in anything. Now, what if we took the power
of this tool and applied it to some big, serious real-world problems? Today I want to show you
three research projects that we conducted
at the University of Wuppertal that show us how play can help us
to learn, grow and thrive. The first one was funded
by the German Federal Foreign Office, and it’s about the complex
topic of politics and bringing that closer to kids in school
through the medium of play. Because when we play, we joyfully explore
complex systems from a new perspective, and that's perfect for politics. One of the games that resulted
from this project is this. This is the game Grid by Danny Ludwig. It's a complex game about the transition
to renewable energies. You can also see here
what our students do well: aesthetics and new kinds of interaction. Now, usually at some point in the project, we would then go into the workshop
and build a physical prototype so we can go out and test it with people. Unfortunately, that was
when the pandemic hit us, and the lockdowns came,
and nobody was going anywhere. That’s when we almost had
to cancel this project because how are you going to test
your games with people if you can’t build it
and go out and play with them? Fortunately, the situation forced us
to rethink the project a bit and do this. This is the game Consensus by Carl Siepen. And you see it’s a printable
version of the game. It’s very low-tech, actually:
a single-sided printing, black and white. We could email this,
and that’s what we did to people. So during lockdowns, they could play
at their kitchen tables. And this is also what we released
in the end on the project website. All the games, the whole collection,
can be downloaded by everybody. Teachers in school, no problem. Print it and play it. Also, the students agreed
to release every game under a very friendly
Creative Commons license. So all the games can be
adapted, translated - we have German and English right now - expanded. No problem. It’s very easy. I think that is a great way
how play can help us learn. But it can also do more:
it can help us grow. The next project is about finding
our creativity in social media. That isn’t easy because social media is,
of course, full of instant gratifications, it’s very distracting, it’s fragmented. That's not easy if you look
for your own creativity. But what if we turn things on their head and use these rather problematic aspects
of social media as part of the solution? That’s the idea behind CREactivities, a project which I was lucky enough
to realize together with Maike Strauch. And CREactivities is a chatbot. It lives in your messenger, and it sends you creative
challenges throughout the day. So if this is about saving money,
the first challenge might be: Look for places in the home
where unused money tends to pile up. You sharpen your view,
you take some photos, and then you send these photos
back to the chatbot. And the bot will redistribute
your solution to other people who also use CREactivities. Then it will give you feedback. So you get real humans giving
you feedback on your ideas. And this goes on all the way
through the entire design process: seeing the problem, sketching ideas,
and then building a physical prototype. In this case, that is a piggy
bank with milestones to keep you motivated
by saving your money in it. All of that happens in a quest. It’s embedded in a story
that takes us all the way to the spark of inspiration,
a magical crystal, the source of all creative energy. But it takes us through
the valley of idealessness, the jungle of distractions
and up to the mountain of doubt. Places we all know too well, I think. But as you progress
on this quest, you get better. There are different design skills
that you learn here: that is criticize, research,
and vision, and act. And you level up
like in a computer game, but differently,
not like in a computer game. These are not just numbers
in the computer. These are real-life skills you learn. And the feedback comes
from real people on real problems. And of course, if you allow me
a little spoiler here, finding creativity is not about
finding a magical crystal. It’s about finding it in ourselves. And, of course, you’re not alone. It’s an entire community of people
who are eager to invent small solutions for small problems in our everyday lives. Here you see some of them. And, of course, one result
of this project is people who discovered their own creative powers. And that’s something great to discover. And I think that’s a great way
how play can help us grow because play can motivate us
to keep going until we reach our goal. So far, I’ve shown you two projects:
one about learning, one about growing. The third project I want to show
you today is about thriving. And play is good here
because play can help us to safely explore
different possible futures and decide if we like them or not. The project I'm showing you here
is a critical design project. It's one that explores a dystopian future
that I personally do not want. It’s about the question of what would
happen to our world, our everyday lives, if we chose to have our governments
and our courts be replaced by an artificial intelligence. I’m very happy that I was able to do
this project together with David von Netzer, David Hrlic, C.J. Weld,
Alex Görts and Piet Becker. And it’s called aicracy. Let’s take a look. So the students designed different
everyday objects that show us what life would be like
if we chose to live that way. Like this: this is a transparency bracelet and, well, all citizens have to wear it
all day when they are awake. And it’s used to track everybody, and the algorithm also gives you
feedback on your behavior. This is another wearable.
This is the happiness patch. You also wear it in your body, and the morning you connect it
to your bloodstream, and it will measure how happy you are. And if people are a bit unhappy,
it gives you a shot of dopamine, and it makes you artificially happy. Mmmm. This is Julia. She’s the perfect citizen
from the point of view of the algorithm. She’s jogging and keeping herself fit, but only where she can be filmed
by the surveillance camera. This is Alex, her boyfriend.
He’s hitting the snooze button. The algorithm doesn’t like that. He also wears the happiness patch.
He’s very happy. Of course he is. But he has a bit
different life, I would say. Here, for example,
you will see him go to work. He goes to work through dark passages,
and the algorithm does not like that. This you can film in Wuppertal
without special effects necessary. Okay. Alex has arrived at the supermarket.
Now he’s going shopping. What is shopping like? Well, maybe personalised prices,
like we know them from insurances, would also find their way
into the supermarket. We want to motivate him
to be more engaged. So natural food is a bit
more expensive for him. But no worries - he gets the same
nutrition from a tasty powder. Mmm. Differently, when Julia comes
to the supermarket, we want to encourage her
to keep as she is. We want to keep her healthy. That is why natural food
is cheaper for her, subsidised. How can this be fair? How can this
be programmed? Who programs it? Well, everybody.
We all program it together. Every Sunday is voting day, and that means
every Sunday we go to the voting terminal. Here we see Julia,
and she’s getting marbles. These are votes. So different questions about
how to live together. And she can answer these questions
by inserting marbles. Now Alex is coming to the voting terminal.
Any idea what happens? A bit less. He’s not that
well compliant, I would say. He’s not that popular
from the algorithm’s point of view, so he’s getting fewer marbles. And that’s a bit complicated, of course. Because there are more
than three questions. I can understand that this is difficult. And I can also understand
that he’s getting a bit angry here, but don’t worry, in aicracy
everybody is happy all the time. Mmmmm. Who wants to live in this future? Nobody. Okay, good. Me neither. But playing it through is something
that could be the first step to prevent it from happening, of course. I would also like to show you
what ‘playing it through’ meant for us. This is our design process. So we start looking to the world:
what’s happening right now? And then we try to see
the potentials in it. Here come the potentials, okay? And then we focus on
the most promising ones. We respond to these
potentials with concepts: what could be done concretely? We try to give it a shape,
sketches get bigger, and then we go into the workshop
and build something. Many people think design is
what happens at the bottom part. It’s actually the entire thing. And that is how play
can help us to thrive. It can help us to safely
explore possible futures without having to fear any consequences. And that’s great. So, let’s change the way
we think about play. Play is not a waste of time. It’s not something only kids should do. It’s not something that won’t work
on big, serious, real-life problems. It has the power to, for example,
level up learning to a new way that matches the complexity of the world. It has the power to transform social media from a place of mindless consumption
into one of mindful connection. And it has the power to let us safely,
like a child, explore what could be and use that as a point of orientation. Is that a future I want, or is that
something we want to stay away from? It can change our world. It can change us.
It can change our future. All we have to do is change
the way we think about it. So when you see a problem out there,
try it, play with it. Because our brains run on fun. (Applause) Thank you.
