Play works

Like Tom Sawyer's friends, most of us are willing to work very hard if it seems like play. How else explain the appeal of crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, cross-stitch and golf? Because of all the work invested in play, pleasure and simple amusement, civilization has made great strides. Various writers have touched on this subject. Eric Hoffer comes to mind. Steven Johnson has made it the focus of an entire book, Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World (2016).

"You will find the future wherever people are having the most fun," Johnson writes. As proof he looks to the past.

Computers are now vital to virtually every business, every government office, every military operation and every bank transaction. Back in 1961 computers were big and slow and seemed to have few practical uses. Then three MIT grad students invented a computer game called Spacewar! Many more computer games followed, and soon youngsters pleaded with their parents for home computers to play these games. This led to more interest in computers and multiplying uses for computers, and adults wanted home computers for themselves.

Taverns and coffeehouses have for centuries been places where people go for fun. While there they talk, communicating ideas and rallying support for causes. Johnson traces the success of the American Revolution to taverns, where Thomas Paine's Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence were often read aloud. As for coffeehouses, he says public museums, insurance corporations, formal stock exchanges and weekly magazines all had their roots in them.

Johnson does much the same kind of thing with the spice trade, tea, movies, chess, fashion and other pleasure pursuits that led to unexpected developments.

Sometimes the process works in reverse. The author says both Disney's EPCOT and shopping malls originated as ideas for modernistic residential communities. In neither case did the housing aspect of the plan ever happen. EPCOT became a theme park. Shopping malls became places where people, especially women and teenagers, go to get away from home for a few hours.