Wiivolution

When was the last time you played? Not played an instrument, not music, but with a toy. My siblings bought a Nintendo Wii set and our lives were never the same. As we’re all in our 20s and 30s, I can’t even remember the last time we played together. It’s very strange how adulthood seems to preclude playing from living, even when the most memorable, most relevant, most impactful individuals in history spent a good deal doing exactly that. Einstein played with physics. Steve Jobs plays with ideas. So on and so forth. Technology, created by people to help us become better people, is almost always the result of some kind of play. Which is why even toys, as trivial pursuits as they are, are important, and I’ll tell you why. We spend most of our waking hours as adults alone, so much so that technology, these tools, extensions of us, keep us in solitary confinement. iPod. MySpace. In an increasingly “my” saturated world, Wii is a welcome respite from myself. It’s a game I can share with others, a name that connotes a sense of glee, belonging, community—which, strangely mirrors Obama’s platform that “A more perfect union,” what will make a country succeed, is not I, but “we.”