James Woudhuysen

Play as the main event in international and UK culture.

Abstract Play has become a dominant trend in the culture of Western adults. This chapter of Cultural Trends looks at its prevalence and growth. The first section briefly discusses what play is. The second provides an overview of playful varieties of leisure in the US and worldwide, and sums up some of the main trends that have emerged. The third follows the same method in relation to the UK. The fourth section looks at the increasing incidence of play at work, while the final section draws conclusions from the evidence presented. Throughout, special attention is played to the role of information technology in play. Five industries are covered extensively ‐ computer games; gambling; sport; performing arts; and fairs, theme parks and adventure holidays. Attendance at, participation in and paid employment in play constitute three levels of engagement in it. This chapter tries to measure these levels of engagement by bringing together just some of the vast but disparate literature and statistics on play. The range of sources drawn upon is varied. Inspired by the perspectives of writers in economics, politics, sociology and technology, this chapter uses official government data, and data taken from the business press, to illustrate its ideas. The chapter asks and answers the following three questions: • Does play provide spaces and moments of freedom that, fortunately enough, lie beyond the grasp of market forces? • Is the entertainment provided by play genuinely educational, or does absorption in play instead represent a degraded notion of the Self? • By favouring mass attendance at, mass participation in and mass employment in playful activities, have UK government policies advanced the cause of culture ‐ or have they set it back?

Rethinking Packaging: How Electronic Packs for Pharmaceuticals Work with Mobile IT to Improve Patient Adherence to Medication Regimens

Indictments of waste, and distaste for the packaging of consumer goods, are widespread in modern life. Yet in England, at least, households account for less than a third of overall waste, and household waste—like the industrial and commercial kinds—is actually in decline. In addition, the potentialities of packaging as a force for progress are too often ignored. Electronic packaging could improve the way users of prescription drugs take their medicines. With an ageing population taking more and more varied kinds of drugs, patient adherence to medication regimens is a growing social and economic issue. Linked to mobile IT, electronic packaging can, in principle, do much to ensure that medical patients wind up taking the right drugs at the right times. The paper reviews four examples of electronic packaging, and goes on to situate them in the context of mobile health (mHealth)—mobile telephony applications that prompt patients, each time they take medicine, to report their symptoms very simply and, if necessary, receive advice back from doctors. Together, reporting adherence and symptoms can enable prescribers to build up a rich picture of the effectiveness of each prescription issued. Doses or medication can be changed, or medication withdrawn, using real intelligence about patients. The dual approach outlined here can also reduce the problems that arise with the use of multiple medications by a patient. Innovation in the way in which prescription drugs are packaged could do a lot for society. This paper explores the potential of linking the electronic packaging of medicines to mobile IT, as well as the attitudinal and likely regulatory barriers that could impede progress in this domain.

Innovation in Energy: Expressions of a Crisis, and Some Ways Forward

Using academic, journalistic and statistical sources, this paper situates energy innovation in historical context before describing the current sclerosis of Western energy R&D. It explores how rising energy prices denote weak innovation, and how societys emphasis on green technologies, green subsidies and green jobs has effectively supplanted a rounded programme of innovation. The paper refuses to prefer one source of energy to another, suggesting that this is to ignore the potential for technological change. It treats the rebound effect as positive, delves into the limitations of energy efficiency, and gives even shorter shrift to energy conservation. The paper shows how energy innovation has become synonymous with risk, reviews failure in energy innovation, and attacks innovations around smart meters and the behaviour of energy users. We conclude by briefly inspecting the relationship between finance and energy innovation, and, throughout, suggest elements of a new political approach to the latter.

The Craze for Design Thinking

Paper to the Fifth International Conference on Design Principles and Practices, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 2-4 February 2011. Please email cgpublisher@cgpublisher.com for permission to reproduce