For Project 1, our group researched kites historically and culturally where the range of kites that we discussed about ranged from dragon kites of the BC era to sport kites of the modern era. The research for this can be seen in the slides through the link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aSt-wwB4hbvg9ks3GY9KMOM2eB8e_sIX3ubMDPWi9Dk/edit?usp=sharing . The kite that I focused on is the Steiff Roloplan Kite which was known for its technological advancement in aerial photography. This wasn’t significant in the essence of toy playing, but it was important in the sense of technology as new tactics could be used with this militarily and diplomatically.
The question that I’d like to focus on which was in our presentation is “Has our understanding of play developed throughout time?”. I personally believe that there has been a paradigm shift with play as our modern comprehension of play is much more idealized than what I believe was considered play in the past. For example, when I read Toys as Culture, it talked about Mayan traditions as play, but a classmate also stated that it’s not play as it’s violent. I think that the notion of violence is now not associated with play, but perhaps, in the most primitive state of play of the past, it may be considered play. Of course, there’s no way to confirm as time cannot be manipulated and the past cannot be experienced therefore it cannot be definite that there has been a paradigm shift, but even in modern day, our understanding of play is still adapting to the world around us where we begin to inquire if the object that we interact with such as a computer can be play. In the past when computers didn’t exist, play may not have included that type of “interaction” as “play”.
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