Game II Core Wave: "Ancient Ideas in Modern
Times" or "Time Transcendent Ideas."
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Main Submission
Games can be incredibly varied in their structure but usually they will have qualities that can be roughly defined as- rules, pieces, boards, players, audience, equipment, and sub-categories, extensions, and variations on these. For instance- there are physical games, emotional games, mental games, and spiritual games- though these could be said to be merely different types of boards or arenas of play. I would like to be involved in the creation of a web site dedicated to the discussion about, and development of, a playable version of the ultimate game. -- Narada
Deeper
CoreWave is an interesting development of Hesse's theme. I think he would be most pleased to see that the G B G is evolving through the actual playing of the game itself, in ways that he had not imagined. In particular, the personal computer and associated technologies make a form of G B G playable on the web that is excitingly global, visual, and experimental. Every web page is a move, a bead, in the W W W game- and every hyperlink is a connection tunnel. Information, ideas, inspirations, are indeed playing together- though clearly the orchestra has not finished tuning up and it remains to be heard what music it is possible to play on this organ.
Follow Ups I'm mentioning a book that people here might like: "Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse. It might also be a good link from this move The Infinite Game to the move The Greatest Illusion / Time. Quotes: "There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play." "It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever /must/ play, cannot /play/." "The passage of time is always relative to that which does not pass, to the timeless. Victories occur in time, but the titles won in them are timeless. Titles neither age nor die." "The infinite player in us does not consume time but generates it. Because infinite play is dramatic and has no scripted conclusion, its time is time lived and not time viewed." "As an infinite player one is neither young nor old, for one does not live in the time of another. There is therefore no external measure of an infinite player's temporality. Time does not pass for an infinite player. Each moment of time is a beginning." "Myth provokes explaination but accepts none of it. Where explaination absobs the unspeakable into the speakable, myth reintroduces the silence that makes original discourse possible." "THERE IS BUT ONE INFINITE GAME" -- Enoch
A further relation to illusion, to language, and a point from which to explore other relationships and find new ideas: Sprachspiel - German compound word, from sprach (language, speech) and spiel (game, play (the kind at the theatre)) usually translated as language-game. Sprachspiel is a central concept in Wittgenstein's (Austro-English philosopher) "Philosophical Investigations" (published around 1950) which argues (among other things) that language has meaning only within particular social contexts (each with its own language-game) and therefore that most of philosophy, in abstracting concepts such as truth, the good, meaning, etc. out of the various particular language-games in which they are used, becomes really a meaningless playing with symbols devoid of meaning. Possible connections to other concepts: literary devices, especially metaphor (recall the prohibition of "private" connections in Hesse's Glass Bead Game) the play, especially tragedy. Finally I'd like to add here that this is leading towards reflexion in the game; in a sense the bead game is becoming self-aware. --Smiley
If a person who has never played a saxophone picks one up, squeaks a few sour notes, and claims to be "avant-garde" he or she will not be taken seriously (or tolerated in the spirit of game either, most likely). Ornette Coleman, on the other hand, or Rashaan Roland Kirk, could play outside because they knew how to play inside. The changes just didn't hold their interest. For us to break the rules without knowing them first is a detriment to the game. And while the rules of the G B G are in constant evolution, a game is not a game without rules to play by. -- Todd Grady
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