Purposive Drift

Constructive Disobedience

There is a nice meditation on a picture of a slide in a children's playground by Jaan Valsiner in an interview with 3quarksdaily's Jonathan Pfeiffer, concluding with this bit, which is worth spending some time thinking about:

"... Any object of furniture is a culturally designed object that suggests to its users — children or adults alike — some socially preferred courses of action. Yet by that suggestion, these objects call forth counter-action to the opposite, resistance to suggestions, and in one word, creativity. If there were no people — children or adults — who would constructively "disobey" the socially suggested ways of being, then no new technologies or social changes could be possible."