Influx

If the recent success of the Wii teaches us anything, it’s clear that the fun and playful is winning out over the technical.

The trend has been around for sometime, but the shift away from manufactured glossy graphics and high production values now seems to be pervasive.

It’s almost as if there’s some kind of Luddite rebellion taking place.

It’s interesting to see this in animation and film production where hand-crafted is starting to replace computer crafted.

This is most visible in Michel Gondry’s new feature the Science of Sleep.

It’s also in this music video from the Softlines.

The real point is the desire to demonstrate that human beings were involved in the creative process. It is interesting that this happening at the same time as creativity is becoming more democratic.

It’s present in the world of Make Magazine, where people are encouraged to play with technology on their own terms; hacking, re-making and forming new technologies out of old.

It’s obviously critical for consumer technology brands to understand the opportunities to be had by encouraging play and expression. Hiding and locking yourself behind clean, sterile boxes and interfaces is not the solution.

This isn’t about personalization, but something deeper.

What can you do to enable play?

How can encourage human interaction and expression?

Let’s leave the final word to hacker, Andrew Huang