Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Workers’ Playtime
I don’t mean to snark, but if there is something hilariously apt about Pat ‘The Play Ethic’ Kane posting to MetaTalk.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, The Play Ethic is Kane’s well-meaning but pretty much offensive attempt to redefine the way we operate in the workplace and society — down with the Protestant worth ethic, it’s time for freewheeling creativity; down with drudgery for life, it’s time for flitting cheerily from job to job. All well and good if, like Pat and I, you’re an educated middle-class freelancer with a nice chunk of disposable income. A bit of a kick in the teeth if you’re… pretty much everyone else in the whole wide world. Still, it’s good to see Kane practice what he preaches — if you’re a ‘soulitarian’ (as he calls, um, play-ethicistarians) you certainly have plenty of time to muck about on Metafilter, believe me.
Yeah, am fully aware of the irony.
And, it must be said, Mr. Kane posts damn good links to the ‘Filter.
Posted by Jack at 4pm on 26.04.03
Gah!
As little as I know about Mr Kane, I never thought I’d agree with a man who used to sing with his tongue halfway down his throat. For the past year or so I’ve been well and truly fed up with my lot, but also feeling powerless to change it. Drained by my work, but tied to it. I don’t have a “work ethic” but I have become a worker and it’s a horrific place to be.
Save me, Pat!
Posted by Donna at 5pm on 28.04.03
Amazing what you find on a narcisstic Google search… and good to find some intelligent Scottish blogging (will search your favorites list). You’ll be delighted to hear that my book on The Play Ethic has just gone to my publishers, Macmillan, out early next year. (Incidentally, a social wage, a 30-to-25 hour work week target over ten years [see Scandinavian examples/France recently, it can be done], and the securing of an “innovation commons” from potential bandwidth should sort out your confusions about the socio-economic viability of the play ethic.)
On tongue down throat singing: could you give me some comparisons please, so I know who else has the same affliction? Incidentally, if you have enough individuality to know you don’t like work, you should be talented enough to find a life outside of work: that’s the play-ethical challenge, folks! Question is: can freelancers stop bitching pointlessly about each other on weblogs, and try instead to create new associations and mutuals that can support their “cheery flitting from job to job”?
[tumbleweed, high winds, clang of lonely church bell]
No…I guess not.
Posted by pat kane at 7pm on 30.04.03
‘can freelancers stop bitching pointlessly about each other on weblogs?’ - I thought that’s what they were for!
I must admit I’m basing my, um, considered analysis of the play ethic on a hungover reading of the Observer piece when it came out, and I partly snipe because I’m a practicing play ethicist and have enough work ethic residue to feel guilty about it… It’s not so much that I doubt the socio-economic viability of a play ethic future, and I’m all for a Scandinavian model being applied to Scotland (my vote went to the SSP today), but right now, the play ethic seems a step too far as a practical plan, in that it’s utopian in the neverland sense - we aren’t anywhere near the point when the play ethic could become a reality for the majority, even in a nice first world place like this - hence ‘a kick in the teeth’ for those who don’t have a work ethic so much as a pressing need to work.
‘innovation commons’ - now that sounds right up my social software street, so I’ll ‘try… to create new associations’ by emailing you a few questions relating to a piece I’m doing on, um, technology-enabled artistic collaboration and new modes of social linking for Product magazine. Come to think of it, this little discussion here is in itself a prime example of what I’m wanting to say about the easy discovery of people with like interests/useful skills with technologies like FOAF, or the Lazyweb…
Posted by Jack at 10am on 01.05.03
Note to self: um, must stop writing, um, ‘um’ so often.
Posted by Jack at 10am on 01.05.03
Small world, big internet. Hello Pat! I hope you’re well. I was thinking of you recently because I was enlisted to speak at the Herald student press awards, just like you did when I was a nipper… seems like coming full circle, in some way… maybe it’s time to flit to another profession - ?
Anyway do please keep fighting with Jack. He needs stimulation, or he gets jaded and fidgety.
Posted by hannah at 1pm on 01.05.03
Pat- re your singing style - your tongue is retracted when you sing, thus creating a particular resonance as the pharyngeal cavity is widened laterally and narrowed anterior-posteriorly. Some people do it when they talk, others when they sing, and sometimes it is part of a regional accent (e.g. Aberdonian). John Major does it (dunno about his singing voice, mind you) as does (forgive me) Janet Street Porter. It is common in pub/club singing.
Apologies for (unfair) comparisons, but you did ask, like…
Posted by Donna at 8pm on 01.05.03
Hi Jack, contact me any time about things social and software. SSP my second vote this time, first votes last time. Alan Coombs techno-utopian bit in Sheridan’s Imagine my fav bit of Scottish Futurism for years (other than Ken McLeod’s stuff). Though the scariest SF (or social-science fiction) I’ve read is Negri’n’Hardt’s Empire. V. relevant to “technology-enabled artistic collaboration and new modes of social linking”. Does it mean we’re really all commnunalislamists?
Hullo, young filly McGill —- and fuksake, there’s some bad circular karma with student journo awards… career change, sure: away you and write Eggers/Moody zeit-fiction with details filled in from all those stony-faced Woodlands-Road derives I see you doing from the 44 bus.. while thinking about how cool it would be to be Pauline Kael in 1974.
And Donna: so I’m physiologically a pub singer. Haw: ta. And here I am listening to my Verve Remix record, trying to figure out the right soundscape for my dark-timbred voice… I will not be discouraged.
Incidentally: deepest Indo-European root for play is -dlegh: meaning, to engage the world. Ain’t-that-cool-news?
Posted by pat at 2am on 02.05.03
Re: circularity of student journalism award karma, some further proof: I failed win one as a student, and i’m not presenting any now. Coincidence? Or a higher power at work…
Pat - I’m finalising what it is i’m actually writing about next week, so will fire off a few questions as soon as I stop trying to include everything but the wirelessly enabled database driven kitchen sink…
Posted by Jack at 10am on 02.05.03