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Embedding games in education and everyday life.

Or, at least a palliative.  Civilizational progress past and future.

[ by Charles Cameron — some middle ground? ]
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Two pieces have struck me in the last couple of days for their, well, maturity. By which I find I mean their ability to hold the tension between two opposites — among the most celebrated of all — while seeking an appropriate balance between them.

There’s an interesting blend of PR and wisdom in there, and something akin to a disciplined exhaustion with war. But this is Amsterdam…

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My second example comes from Caitlin Fitz Gerald at Gunpowder and Lead, and is titled On Taking Nonviolence Seriously. A snapshot:

I understand the urge to dismiss nonviolence in the face of the brutality of the Syrian regime. I certainly don’t know what is best for the people of Syria in this conflict, and I’m not sure I would have the courage to urge non-violence to people who are being attacked by their own government daily, but I would urge anyone dismissing nonviolent means as completely absurd to read a little Gene Sharp (whose work Mr. Serwer references in his piece) first.

Early in his seminal work From Dictatorship to Democracy (pdf), Sharp makes a key point about the why for nonviolent means, that ”By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.”

I don’t want to get too strange about this, but we can exult in war and we can rejoice in peace — our lives play out in the tension between impulses, and that’s a long walk on a high wire…

I have been reading about the potential of 3-D printing here and there, particularly at John Robb’s   Global Guerrillas site. It looked hopeful as a technology vector, but not having a tech background myself, it was harder to envision the parameters of potential application and their possible economic impact.

The following short TED talk by Lisa Harouni I found to be a useful intro for the non-engineer. Much of it is illustrated by specific examples:

My first thought, given the low and descending cost of these devices, coupled with increasing sophistication and power is the boon it will be to small to medium sized manufacturers locked into competition with low-cost foreign producers. Transcontinental transport costs are instantly axed from the price while maintaining quality control (something most Chinese manufacturers, for example, have trouble attaining to level demanded by high end customers). It also revolutionizes the “high end” market for customers demanding unusual or specifically customized products.

The second thought is Harouni’s remark that 3-D printing makes possible devices that could not be manufactured in any other way. That’s an affordable, economically transformative, technology put in the hands of a new generation of “garage tinkerers” – the next Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs are out there, somewhere.

My third thought is, that our present elite, who are deeply vested in a crony capitalist ethos, gatekeeping and policies that create economic stagnation while “locking in” their comparative socioeconomic advantage and power as a political class, will eventually look askance at ordinary people having access to this technology.

When lobbyists from fortune 500 companies or foreign countries(!) begin squealing about losing market share to small-fry manufacturers, expect efforts to create regulatory barriers to market entry with 3-D printing in the same spirit that politicians today want to legislatively “roll back” the disruptive effects of unregulated internet access at the behest of the copyright cartel.

3-D printing technology needs to become as widely dispersed as computing itself, in order that not happen.

Scoble claims AirPlay will be on par with the advent of RSS.

Oddly enough, when I first got an iPad my first thought was to find a way to stream it through an LCD projection system at work through our network ( giving the IT department much cause for amusement). Now I am wondering if the AppleTV device and/or AirPlay will get this idea off the ground….

Comments from the technophile-geek portion of the readership are cordially invited.